D  639   .R4  C5  1920 
Committee  on  the  War  and  thj 
Religious  Outlook.  | 
Religion  among  American  men! 


Digitized  by 

tlie  Internet  Archive 

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https://archive.org/details/religionamongameOOcomm_0 


RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


V 

FINAL  REPORTS  OF  THE  COMMITTEE  ON 
THE  WAR  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS 
OUTLOOK 

Religion  among  American  Men.  (Ready.) 

The  Missionary  Outlook  in  the  Light  of  the  War.  (In 
press.) 

The  Church  and  Industrial  Reconstruction. 

The  Teaching  Work  of  the  Church  in  the  Light  of  the 
Present  Situation. 

The  Effect  of  the  War  on  the  Local  Church. 

PRiNaPLEs  OF  Christian  Unity  in  the  Light  of  the  War. 


RELIGION  AMONG 
AMERICAN  MEN 

As  Revealed  by  a  Study  of 
Conditions  in  the  Army 


THE  COMMITTEE  ON  THE  WAR 
AND  THE  RELIGIOUS  OUTLOOK 


ASSOCIATION  PRESS 

New    York:    347    Madison  Avbnub 
1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
William  Adams  Brown 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


/.  The  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Out- 
look and  Its  Work. 

This  volume  is  one  of  a  series  of  studies  that  is  being 
brought  out  by  the  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Reli- 
gious Outlook.  The  Committee  was  constituted,  while 
the  war  was  still  in  progress,  by  the  joint  action  of  the 
Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America 
and  the  General  War-Time  Commission  of  the  Churches 
and  was  an  expression  of  the  conviction  that  the  war 
had  laid  upon  the  Churches  the  duty  of  the  most  thorough 
self-examination.  The  Committee  consisted  of  a  small 
group  of  representative  men  and  women  of  the  various 
Protestant  Churches  appointed  "to  consider  the  state  of 
religion  as  revealed  or  affected  by  the  war,  with  special 
reference  to  the  duty  and  opportunity  of  the  churches, 
and  to  prepare  these  findings  for  submission  to  the 
churches."  While  created  through  the  initiative  of  the 
Federal  Council  and  the  General  War-Time  Commission, 
it  was  given  entire  freedom  to  act  according  to  its  own 
judgment  and  was  empowered  to  add  to  its  number. 

The  Committee  was  originally  organized  with  Presi- 
dent Henry  Churchill  King  as  its  Chairman  and  Pro- 
fessor William  Adams  Brown  as  Vice-Chairman.  On 
account  of  prolonged  absence  in  Europe,  President  King 
was  compelled  to  resign  the  chairmanship  in  the  spring 
of  1919  and  Professor  Brown  became  the  Chairman  of 
the  group,  with  President  King  and  Rev.  Charles  W. 
Gilkey  as  Vice-Chairmen.  Rev.  Samuel  McCrea  Cavert 
was  chosen  to  serve  as  Secretary  of  the  Committee  and 
Rev.  Angus  Dun  as  Associate  Secretary. 


vi 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


When  the  Committee  began  its  work,  four  main  lines 
of  inquiry  suggested  themselves  as  of  chief  importance : 

1.  What  effect  has  the  war  had  upon  the  per- 
sonal religious  experience?  How  far  has  it  rein- 
forced, how  far  altered,  the  existing  type  of  religious 
life  and  thought  ? 

2.  What  eflfect  has  the  war  had  upon  the  organ- 
ized Christian  Church?  What  changes,  if  any,  are 
called  for  in  its  spirit  and  activities  ? 

3.  What  effect  has  the  war  had  upon  Christian 
teaching?  What  changes,  if  any,  are  called  for  in  its 
content  or  method? 

4.  What  effect  has  the  war  had  upon  the  duty  of 
the  Church  with  reference  to  social  problems  of  the 
time?  What  reconstructions  are  needed  to  make 
our  social  order  more  Christian? 

As  the  Committee  proceeded  with  these  inquiries, 
several  distinct  fields  of  investigation  emerged  and  led 
the  Committee  to  adopt  the  plan  of  bringing  out  a  group 
of  reports  instead  of  a  single  volume.  The  present  study, 
the  first  in  a  series  of  final  reports,  deals  with  the  lessons 
that  we  feel  have  been  learned  from  a  study  of  religion 
in  the  army.  Other  forthcoming  reports  are  to  deal 
successively  with  the  Missionary  Outlook  in  the  Light  of 
the  War,  the  Teaching  Work  of  the  Church  in  the  Light 
of  the  Present  Situation,  the  Church  and  Industrial  Re- 
construction, the  Effect  of  the  War  on  the  Local  Church, 
and  Principles  of  Christian  Unity  in  the  Light  of  the 
War. 

Earlier  preliminary  publications  of  the  Committee  con- 
sisted of  a  comprehensive  bibliography  on  the  War  and 
Religion,  and  a  series  of  pamphlets  under  the  general 
heading  "The  Religious  Outlook,"  in  which  the  following 
numbers  have  thus  far  appeared : 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


vii 


"The  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook,"  by  Dr.  Robert 
E.  Speer. 

"Christian  Principles  Essential  to  a  New  World 
Order,"  by  President  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

"The  Church's  Message  to  the  Nation,"  by  Professor 
Harry  Emerson  Fosdick. 

"Christian  Principles  and  Industrial  Reconstruction," 
by  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell. 

"The  Church  and  Religious  Education,"  by  President 
William  Douglas  Mackenzie. 

"The  New  Home  Mission  of  the  Church,"  by  Dr. 
William  P.  Shriver. 

"Christian  Aspects  of  Economic  Reconstruction,"  by 
Professor  Herbert  N.  Shenton. 

"The  War  and  the  Woman  Point  of  View,"  by  Rhoda 
E.  McCulloch. 

Other  numbers  in  the  series  of  pamphlets  are  also 
under  consideration. 

Our  special  thanks  are  due  to  Association  Press, 
which  has  assumed  responsibility  for  issuing  the  publica- 
tions of  the  Committee. 

//.   The  Present  Volume. 

The  data  on  which  this  report  is  based  have  been 
gleaned  from  many  sources,  of  which  the  most  important 
are  the  following : 

1.  Replies  received  from  approximately  one  hun- 
dred chaplains,  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries,  and  officers 
or  privates  in  the  army,  to  a  questionnaire  prepared 
and  distributed  by  the  Committee.  These  replies  are 
based  on  observation  of  and  contact  with  thousands 
of  men. 

2.  Extensive  interviews  conducted  in  the  Ameri- 
can Expeditionary  Forces  by  Rev.  James  I.  Vance, 
Rev.  Andrew  M.  Brodie,  and  Rev.  Herbert  A.  Jump, 
under  the  general  supervision  of  President  Henry 


viii 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


Churchill  King  during  the  time  when  he  was  Reli- 
gious Work  Director  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  overseas. 

3.  Personal  conferences  with  chaplains,  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  secretaries,  and  others,  at  the  office  of  the 
Committee. 

4.  A  large  number  of  letters  received  by  war 
commissions  and  individuals  from  chaplains  or  sol- 
diers in  the  service.  Particular  mention  should  be 
made  of  the  War  Commission  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  which  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Com- 
mittee its  extensive  correspondence  with  Episco- 
palian chaplains  on  the  subject  of  the  effect  of  the 
war  on  religion. 

5.  Articles  in  the  religious  press  by  chaplains 
and  others  dealing  with  the  religious  situation  in  the 
army  or  the  effect  of  the  army  experience  on  reli- 
gious life. 

6.  The  personal  experience  of  members  of  the 
Committee  and  its  secretaries. 

When  quotations  embodied  in  this  volume  are  from 
confidential  replies  to  our  questionnaire  or  from  per- 
sonal interviews,  the  source  of  the  quotation  is  not  indi- 
cated although  the  statements  appear  in  quotation  marks. 
When  the  quotation  is  from  printed  publications  the 
source  is  generally  indicated  in  a  footnote.  If  anyone 
is  interested  in  pursuing  the  study  further,  extensive 
annotated  reading  lists  on  various  phases  of  the  subject 
will  be  found  in  the  bibliography  on  the  War  and  Reli- 
gion, issued  by  the  Committee.^ 

In  this  report  there  are  many  references  to  studies 
made  by  English  chaplains,  individually  or  collectively, 
concerning  religion  in  the  British  army.  It  has  been 
the  general  policy  of  this  Committee,  however,  not  to  use 

»"The  War  and  Religion:  A  Preliminary  Bibliography  of  Material  in 
English  Prior  to  January  1,  1919,"  compiled  by  Marion  J.  Bradshaw  for 
the  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook.  Association  Press, 
1919.    136  pages.  $1.50. 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


ix 


this  British  material  as  a  source  for  our  conclusions. 
Quotations  from  it  are  generally  placed  in  footnotes  and 
are  given  for  purposes  of  comparison  rather  than  as 
evidence  for  our  own  point  of  view.  It  should  be 
stated  that  the  report  entitled  "The  Army  and  Religion," 
prepared  by  a  British  interdenominational  committee  con- 
vened by  Professor  David  S.  Cairns  and  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  did  not  come  to  our  hands  until  after  our 
own  report,  with  the  exception  of  the  last  chapter,  was 
in  press. 

It  was  originally  intended  that  this  investigation  should 
deal  with  the  navy  as  well  as  the  army,  but  the  data 
secured  concerning  the  situation  in  the  navy  were  in- 
sufficient to  make  generalization  possible.  So  far,  how- 
ever, as  information  concerning  the  navy  was  received,  it 
did  not  seem  to  reflect  a  situation  very  different  from  that 
found  in  the  army. 

It  should  also  be  understood  that  this  report  is  based 
on  inquiries  made  by  Protestants  among  Protestants  and 
that  its  conclusions,  therefore,  ought  not  to  be  assumed 
as  necessarily  valid  in  the  case  of  Roman  Catholics. 

The  Committee  is  grateful  to  hundreds  of  chaplains, 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries,  and  officers  and  privates  in  the 
army,  without  whose  interest  and  assistance  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  prepare  this  report.  We  are 
particularly  indebted,  however,  to  the  Rev.  Professor 
Henry  B.  Washburn,  Executive  Secretary  of  the  War 
Commission  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  who  accepted  the 
responsibility  of  serving  as  chairman  of  a  group  which 
gave  detailed  criticism  to  the  report.  Among  others 
whose  cooperation  in  this  way  has  also  been  of  great 
assistance  should  be  mentioned  other  members  of  the 
Committee,  particularly  Professor  Henry  B.  Wright,  and 
the  following,  who,  though  not  members  of  the  Commit- 
tee, have  been  consulted  in  the  preparation  of  the  volume : 
Chaplain  John  T.  Axton,  President  Clarence  A.  Barbour, 
Right  Rev.  Charles  H.  Brent,  Chaplain  A.  M.  Brodie, 


X 


EDITORIAL  PREFACE 


Rev.  W.  Stuart  Cramer,  Rev.  Major  Ralph  H.  Ferris, 
Col.  Henry  W.  Hodge,  Rev.  Herbert  A.  Jump,  Rev. 
Paul  D.  Moody,  Rev.  James  M.  Philputt,  Chaplain  Her- 
bert Shipman,  Rev.  J.  A.  O.  Stub,  Chaplain  John  M. 
Thomas,  Rev.  Gaylord  S.  White.  The  interviews  con- 
ducted by  Dr.  Brodie,  Dr.  Jump,  and  Dr.  Vance  overseas 
have  added  much  to  the  concreteness  of  our  study. 

The  greater  part  of  the  manuscript  of  the  report  was 
drafted  by  Rev.  Angus  Dun,  Associate  Secretary  of  the 
Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook  for 
several  months.  His  service  in  weighing  the  evidence  and 
formulating  conclusions  has  been  invaluable. 

Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook 

Mrs.  Fred  S.  Bennett.  Rev.  Charles  S.  Macfarland. 

Rev.  William  Adams  Brown.  Pres.  William  D.  Mackenzie. 

Mabel  Cratty.  Dean  Shailer  Mathews. 
George  W.  Coleman.                 _  Dr.  John  R.  Mott. 

Pres.  W.  H.  P.  Faunce.  Rev.  Frank  Mason  North. 

Prof.  Harry  Emerson  Fosdick.  Dr.  Ernest  C.  Richardson. 

Rev.  Charles  W.  Gilkey.  Very  Rev.  Howard  C.  Robbins. 

Frederick  Harris.  Rt.  Rev.  Logan  H.  Roots. 

Prof.  W.  E.  Hocking.  Dr.  Robert  E.  Speer. 

Rev.  Samuel  G.  Inman.  Rev.  Anson  Phelps  Stokes. 

Prof.  Charles  M.  Jacobs.  Rev.  James  I.  Vance. 

Pres.  Henry  Churchill  King.  Prof.  Henry  B.  Washburn. 

Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth.  Pres.  Mary  E.  Woolley. 

Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell.  Prof.  Henry  B.  Wright. 

Rev.  William  Adams  Brown,  Chairman. 
Pres.  Henry  Churchill  King,  Vice-Chairman. 
Rev.  Charles  W.  Gilkey,  Vice-Chairman. 
Rev.  Samuel  McCrea  Cavert,  Secretary. 
Rev.  Angus  Dun,  Associate  Secretary. 
105  East  22d  Street,  New  York,  N.  Y. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Editorial  Preface  ........  v 

Foreword.    By  Senior  Chaplain  Charles  H.  Brent  and 

Chaplain  Paul  D.  Moody        ....  xiii 

Introduction   1 

1.  Motives  of  the  Study   3 

2.  Difficulties  in  the  Way  of  Study  ...  4 

3.  Plan  of  Study   5 

PART  I 

The  State  of  Religion  as  Revealed  in  the  Army 

CHAPTER 

I.   The  Men  and  Christianity      ....  9 

1.  The  Proportion  of  Christians       ...  9 

2.  Widespread  Ignorance  as  to  the  Meaning  of 
Christianity  and  Church  Membership     .       .  14 

3.  The  Fidelity  of  the  Faithful  ....  17 

II.   The  Men  and  the  Church        ....  21 

1.  Criticisms  of  the  Church  for  Inadequacy  in 

Its  Moral  Ideal  and  Moral  Life  ...  22 

2.  Criticisms  of  the  Church  for  UnreaHty  or 
Triviality        .......  25 

3.  Attitude  toward  Denominations     ...  29 

III.  The  Faith  of  the  Majority     ....  33 

IV.  Moral  Standards  and  Life  of  the  Majority  .  40 

1.  Virtues  Generally  Admired  and  Frequently 
Found     ........  43 

2.  Vices    or    Moral    Weaknesses  Frequently 
Found  and  Largely  Condoned        ...  48 

Summary  of  Part  I   57 


xii  CONTENTS 
PART  II 

The  Effect  of  the  War  on  Religion  in  the  Army 

PAGE 

Introduction   63 

V.   The  Effect  of  Military  Training  and  War  on 

Personal  Religion        .....  67 

1.  General  Effect  on  Interest  in  Religion  .       .  69 

2.  The  Experience  of  God  at  the  Front  .       .  76 

3.  The  Question  of  God's  Providence        .       .  82 

4.  The  Prevalence  of  Fatalism  ....  83 

5.  Increased  Faith  in  Immortality      ...  84 

6.  Appreciation  of  the  Meaning  of  the  Cross  .  87 

7.  Interest  in  the  Bible   88 

8.  The  Demand  for  Reality        ....  91 

VI.   The  Effect  on  the  Churches  and  Church- 

manship   93 

1.  Church  Unity  and  Cooperation      ...  93 

2.  Interruption  of  Religious  Habits  .       .       .  100 

3.  Public  Worship   101 

4.  Special  Ministries   104 

VII.   The  Effect  on  Moral  Lifb  and  Standards  .       .  108 

1.  The  Effects  of  Army  Discipline     ...  108 

2.  The  Effect  of  the  Group  Emphasis  ...  Ill 
\                 3.    Gambling   113 

4.  Profanity   113 

5.  Sexual  Immorality  .       .       .       .       .       .  114 

6.  Petty  Stealing   120 

Summary  of  Part  II   122 

PART  III 
Lessons  for  the  Church 

VIII.   What  the  Church  May  Learn  from  the  Army  129 

1.  Concerning  Church  Membership     .       .       .  129 

2.  Concerning  Religious  Education     .       .       .  131 

3.  Concerning  Fundamental  Teachings        .       .  136 

4.  Concerning  Public  Worship  ....  140 

5.  Concerning  Moral  Life  and  Standards  .       .  143 

6.  Concerning  Responsibility  for  the  Community  149 

7.  Concerning  Church  Unity       ....  152 


FOREWORD 


It  is  always  easier  to  theorize  than  it  is  to  master  all 
the  facts  in  a  situation,  and  to  speculate  on  what  we 
would  Hke  to  think  than  to  look  the  facts  squarely  in  the 
face.  It  is  harder  still  to  make  the  correct  deductions 
from  evidence  in  hand.  Such  an  experience  as  the  war, 
the  greatest  testing  period  for  ideals  and  ideas  since  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  crowded  into  a  few  brief 
years  a  complete  challenging  of  generations  of  convictions 
and  beliefs.  Such  a  time  is  bound  to  leave  an  aftermath 
of  change  and  ruins  of  non-material  things  as  great  in 
their  way  as  the  ruins  of  the  Cloth  Hall  at  Ypres,  or  the 
great  cathedral  of  Rheims.  As  we  review  some  of  the 
turning  points  of  history,  it  seems  as  if  the  past  five  years 
had  seen  reversals  or  counterparts  of  those  events  packed 
into  the  narrow  limits  of  a  few  short  months.  The  Cru- 
sades, the  fall  of  Constantinople,  and  the  discovery  of 
America,  all  these  were  epoch  making.  But  Crusaders 
again  have  marched  across  the  fields  of  Palestine,  albeit 
this  time  in  khaki,  not  in  armor.  Islam  is  to  be  no  longer 
a  power  in  Europe,  having  fallen  as  completely  as  Con- 
stantinople fell  in  1453.  And  America  has,  as  it  were, 
rediscovered  Europe,  and  having  entered  into  some  of 
Europe's  problems  finds  the  path  back  to  her  own  former 
simpler  insularity  difficult,  if  not  impossible.  And  all 
this  has  taken  place  to  the  dull  accompaniment  of  the  guns 
that  were  never  silent,  while  in  a  ceaseless  procession  the 
best  and  bravest  of  every  land  marched  in  unbroken  file 
up  to  the  altar  of  sacrifice. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  how  fared  it  with  the  faith  of 
our  fathers  ?  Among  these  tottering  heritages  of  the  past 
there  moved  men  of  faith,  often  in  daily  contact  with  men 


xiv 


FOREWORD 


of  no  faith.  How  fared  they  ?  What  did  they  think  and 
what  did  they  find  ?  As  the  dust  of  conflict  settles,  men 
will  be  more  and  more  likely  to  attempt  records  of  the 
experiences  and  impressions  of  those  days.  The  most 
vocal  will  not  always  be  the  most  clear-sighted  and  the 
ability  to  say  things  well  must  not  be  confused  with  the 
ability  to  see  things  clearly  and  see  them  whole.  The 
lapse  of  time  will  have  made  it  far  more  difficult  to 
record  the  experiences  of  those  days  than  is  realized  now. 
Men  will  honestly  believe  that  what  they  record  them- 
selves as  having  felt  they  really  did  feel  at  the  time,  and 
will  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other 
things,  memory  is  colored  by  subsequent  development  or 
aflfected  by  the  lens  of  time.  The  finer  edge  of  vivid  im- 
pression will  have  worn  away.  They  will  have  read  what 
others  have  said.  And  in  these  reports  by  others  there 
will  be  British  material,  so  that  we  shall  be  in  danger  of 
confusing  our  impressions  of  the  war  with  the  English. 
We  may  never  know  what  it  meant  to  them,  for  we  had 
but  brief  months  as  against  their  years.  It  is  also  true 
that  we  are  unconsciously  influenced  by  what  the  world 
expects  us  to  say  about  that  which  we  underwent  and  our 
testimony  becomes  increasingly  less  valuable. 

The  report  which  constitutes  these  pages  is  the  fusing 
as  far  as  it  is  possible  of  the  impressions  caught  fresh, 
the  redhot  convictions,  expressed  before  the  uniform 
was  laid  aside,  of  men  who  had  walked  often  hand  in 
hand  with  death  and  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives 
looked  daily  and  unafraid  into  the  stern  face  of  danger. 
What  is  recorded  here  is  not  the  impression  of  any  one 
mind,  but  the  composite  of  many  minds.  Composites 
are  rarely  as  satisfactory  as  we  wish.  Like  the  photo- 
graphs made  from  many  negatives,  they  lack  in  sharp- 
ness of  outline  what  they  make  up  in  their  contribution 
to  the  conception  of  a  type.  It  is  easier  to  generalize  if 
we  are  not  hampered  by  too  much  accurate  information 
on  the  subject  or  by  testimony  which  seems  to  be  con- 


FOREWORD 


XV 


flicting.  And  what  has  been  done  in  gathering  the  im- 
pressions found  recorded  here  will  safeguard  us  in  years 
to  come  from  honest  but  misguided  statements  of  the 
case  for  religion  in  the  midst  of  war,  or  against  it. 

There  is  one  generalization,  in  particular,  which  the 
evidence  in  hand  makes  it  necessary  to  record — ^the  wide- 
spread ignorance  on  elementary  religious  matters  even  of 
those  who  professed  to  be  Church  members.  Perhaps  the 
one  exception  was  among  the  Roman  Catholics.  Such 
a  condition  as  revealed  constitutes  a  grave  indictment 
against  the  Churches.  They  have  not  been  true  to  their 
teaching  commission.  It  certainly  calls  for  a  careful 
revision  of  the  pulpit  message.  Christian  instruction  is 
our  first  duty,  and  on  its  success  depends  the  eflfectiveness 
of  exhortation. 

It  has  been  offered  as  an  objection  to  this  report  that 
it  is  too  gloomy,  too  pessimistic  in  tone,  offering  too  little 
encouragement,  and  that  it  may  be  misleading  and  thus 
defeat  its  object.   To  this  two  things  may  be  said. 

First,  the  value  of  such  a  report  lies  in  its  fidelity  and 
honesty.  It  has  not  been  tampered  with  nor  colored.  To 
the  extent  that  it  is  true  that  it  sounds  pessimistic,  it  is 
a  valid  judgment  on  much  present-day  preaching  and 
teaching  of  religion.  We  are  worse  than  fools  if  we  are 
to  learn  nothing  from  the  war,  and  if  men  did  not  find 
their  faith  all  we  have  a  right  to  expect  faith  to  be  when 
shells  are  exploding  and  men  dying  by  the  thousands,  we 
need  not  so  much  examine  our  faith  itself  as  the  form 
in  which  we  have  been  expressing  it  and  teaching  it. 

And,  second,  this  pessimism  is  more  apparent  than  real. 
War  throws  everything  out  of  joint.  Many  pray  who  did 
not  pray  before.  How  many  continue  to  pray  after  the 
danger  has  passed  we  do  not  know,  or  with  how  many  it 
will  become  a  settled  habit  of  life.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  many  who,  puzzled  and  wearied  by  war,  cease 
to  pray,  at  any  rate  with  the  regularity  and  system  they 
once  knew.  But  most,  if  not  all,  of  these  probably  return 


xvi 


FOREWORD 


to  a  normal  life  in  time.  But,  after  all,  when  men  ceased 
to  pray  it  was  for  the  most  part  because  prayer  had 
become  more  or  less  an  external  act  in  their  lives  and 
not  a  source  of  inward  enlightenment  and  strength,  an 
ornament  unsuspectedly  obsolete.  The  deterioration  in 
men  is  always  more  apt  to  manifest  itself  than  the  im- 
provement and  the  man  who  drops  prayer  from  his  life 
is  more  likely  to  be  remarked  than  the  man  who  is  silently 
erecting  an  altar  in  the  secret  places  of  his  heart.  Men 
swear  out  loud  but  for  the  most  part  they  pray  in  secret 
— pray  best,  at  any  rate. 

St.  Paul  wrote  to  the  Corinthians  that  the  fire  would 
try  every  man's  work.  While  this  is  not  the  judgment  of 
which  St.  Paul  wrote,  this  war  has  tried  men's  work  in 
the  same  way  and  the  things  which  are  overthrown  seem 
for  the  time  to  be  more  conspicuous  than  the  things  that 
are  being  erected,  for  the  process  of  rearing  is  slower 
than  the  processes  of  demolition.  But  some  of  the  things 
that  have  gone  have  gone  to  make  way  for  a  better  day. 

It  is  not  with  pessimism  but  with  hope  that  we  turn 
from  this  work  of  careful  sifting  and  compiling  that  has 
been  accomplished  by  the  Committee  on  the  War  and 
the  Religious  Outlook.  It  gives  us  a  deepened  conviction 
of  the  fundamental  religiousness  of  man,  and  therefore 
brings  to  us  a  new  vision  of  the  supreme  importance  of 
the  Church's  task  and  of  its  present  opportunity. 

Charles  H.  Brent, 
Paul  D.  Moody, 

V  Headquarters  Chaplains, 

American  Expeditionary  Forces, 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION 


When  men  in  large  numbers  began  to  pass  from  home 
life  and  civil  occupations  into  the  army  the  first  impres- 
sion of  the  Churches  was  that  they  had  something  to 
"do."  War  commissions  and  parish  committees,  service 
flags  and  comfort  kits,  camp  pastors  and  commissioned 
chaplains  and  the  remarkable  development  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  and  similar  agencies  were  the  outcome  of  this  con- 
viction. But  at  the  same  time  there  has  been  a  steady, 
if  less  widespread,  idea  that  in  the  army  the  Churches 
have  also  something  to  "learn." 

For  the  past  year  the  religious  press,  and  to  some 
extent  the  secular  press,  have  been  carrying  articles  deal- 
ing with  that  something  which  the  Churches  might  learn. 
But  there  has  been  the  most  astonishing  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  what  this  "something"  is.  One  holds  that 
the  "old  Gospel"  in  the  old  language  has  a  universal 
appeal — another,  that  we  need  a  new  language  if  not  a 
new  Gospel.  It  is  argued  that  the  Churches  have  failed 
— and,  on  the  contrary,  that  men  generally  are  filled  with 
a  Christian  outlook  and  a  Christian  motive.  Some  point 
out  that  the  war  is  teaching  men  the  meaning  of  Chris- 
tianity and  revealing  to  them  the  realities  of  religion. 
Others  insist  that  it  is  brutalizing  them  and  making  irre- 
sponsible children  out  of  vigorous  and  independent  men. 
The  debate  has  given  voice  to  hope  and  to  despair, 
strong  assertion  and  extravagant  denial.  Much  of  what 
has  been  said  any  intelligent  pastor  out  of  his  own  expe- 
rience can  reject  at  sight.  Some  things  no  man  nor  group 
of  men  can  affirm  or  deny  with  confidence.  But  through 
it  all  there  runs  the  conviction  that  from  the  army  the 
Church  has  something  to  learn. 

The  chief  reason  for  the  conviction  that  there  are  les- 


2       RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


sons  which  the  Church  may  learn  from  the  army  Hes  in 
the  fact  that  the  soldier  was  the  average  man.  "Before 
the  war  Tommy  was  called  the  man  in  the  street"  is  the 
British  way  of  expressing  it.^  Perhaps  the  soldier 
was  somewhat  above  the  average  physically.  But  in  his 
views  and  attitudes  and  habits  and  motives  he  was  surely 
typical.  Within  certain  limits  which  had  very  little  to  do 
with  his  moral  or  religious  situation,  he  was  chosen  by 
lot  from  a  generation.  And,  as  a  result,  what  was 
gathered  together  was  a  fair  cross  section  of  American 
male  humanity. 

Furthermore  the  minister  in  service  had  an  opportunity 
to  know  the  average  man,  especially  the  unchurched,  such 
as  few  ministers  at  home  have  had.  There  is  nothing 
i  especially  cloistered  about  the  life  of  a  minister,  but,  as 
|„  a  matter  of  fact,  birds  of  a  feather  do  flock  together.  Men 
of  Christian  convictions  and  Christian  affiliations  do  tend 
to  congregate.  And  of  necessity  the  pastor  has  to  con- 
fine himself  very  largely  to  his  own  "charge."  He  meets 
the  "man  in  the  street"  in  church  occasionally,  occasion- 
ally at  home — if  he  calls  in  the  evening.  He  meets  him 
but  he  does  not  live  with  him.  He  rarely  sees  him  at 
work  or  at  play.  In  the  army  the  minister  in  service 
slept  with  him,  ate  with  him,  saw  him  at  work  and  saw 
him  in  his  club.  "The  chaplain  had  an  opportunity  such 
as  almost  no  home  minister  can  have  of  knowing  the 
ordinary  man  and  seeing  with  his  eyes."*  "Life  in  an 
army  cantonment  gave  a  unique  opportunity  to  study  the 
religious  interests  of  the  nation's  men."^  The  Churches 
at  home  want  to  know  what  the  minister  in  service 
found.* 

1  A.  H.  Gray,  "As  Tommy  Sees  Us.". 
'Jbid. 

•  Edwin  A.  McAlpin,  Jr.,  in  The  Presbyterian  Advance. 

*  Cf.  the  Report  on  Chaplains'  Replies  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Kensing- 
ton. "It  is  felt  by  the  Committee  that  the  chaplains  of  the  Navy  and  Army 
have  special  opportunities  for  observing  the  nature  and  character  of  the 
Church's  influence  on  a  large  and  important  section  of  Church  members, 
and  are  therefore  in  a  position  to  supply  valuable  aid  and  counsel  to  the 
Committee  in  bringing  to  light  our  defects  and  failures,  and  indicating  lines 
of  improvement  and  reform." 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


MOTIVES  OF  THE  STUDY 
Of  course  the  importance  of  the  Churches'  knowing  the 
average  man  is  not  due  to  his  being  an  authority  on  reli- 
gion. At  times  it  has  seemed  as  if  those  who  wrote  about 
him  thought  they  had  discovered  a  new  source  of  revela- 
tion. This  report  is  not  based  on  any  such  idea,  although 
we  recognize,  of  course,  that  to  not  a  few  individual 
soldiers  the  experiences  of  war  may  have  brought  per- 
sonal revelations.  For  revelation  we  go  to  the  Man  of 
God  and  to  men  of  God.  We  go  to  the  soldier  for  self-  j 
knowledge  and  a  better  understanding  of  our  task.  In  j  , 
the  first  place,  he  is  the  product  of  the  last  twenty-five  . 
years  of  secular  and  religious  training.  His  roots  go 
deeper  than  that,  but  his  training  has  taken  place  in  that 
period.  His  beliefs  and  character,  his  moral  and  religious 
habits,  pass  judgment  on  the  religious  education  and 
training  of  the  years  just  past.  In  war  "the  world  must 
live  on  its  religious  capital  as  on  its  economic  capital ;  and 
the  outcome  will  test  the  solvency  of  the  past  decade."' 
In  the  second  place,  the  soldier  is  typical  of  the  men  the 
Churches  are  trying  to  reach.  "What  he  thinks  about 
the  state,  about  social  questions,  about  education,  about 
religion  and  the  Church,  is  what  young  men  generally 
think.  His  interests  and  enthusiasms  are  just  those  of 
the  coming  generation.  Where  he  is  wrong,  the  nation  is 
wrong.  To  whatever  extent  he  is  morally  sound,  to  that 
extent  it  is  well  with  us  as  a  people."*  His  mind  is  the 
mind  we  have  to  interest,  his  will  is  the  will  we  have  to 
win.  His  virtues  are  what  we  have  to  build  upon,  his 
sins  what  we  have  to  overcome. 

It  is  important  to  know  men  as  they  came  into  the 
army.  It  is  also  important  to  know  them  as  they  came 
out,  in  so  far  as  they  were  different.  The  experiences 
of  military  training  and  war,  even  the  less  intense  ones, 
are  so  apart  from  normal  life  and  so  mingled  with  emo- 


»W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 
•A.  H.  Gray,  "As  Tommy  Sees  Us." 


4       RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


tion  that  they  must  stand  out  in  the  memories  of  men 
for  years  to  come.  They  will  be  the  stuff  for  men's 
thinking  as  well  as  for  their  story  telling.  They  will  be 
a  point  of  contact  and  a  point  of  reference  for  all  who 
would  reach  their  minds  and  hearts. 

DIFFICULTIES  IN  THE  WAY  OF  STUDY 

One  of  the  most  common  complaints  about  reports  on 
the  religious  and  moral  situation  in  the  army  is  that  they 
are  so  conflicting.  To  some  extent  this  is  of  course  due 
to  faulty  observation  and  faulty  reporting.  Men  find  it 
very  difficult  to  keep  their  own  expectations  and  hopes 
out  of  their  judgments.  And  every  man  attracts  to 
himself  evidence  for  his  own  viewpoint.  The  evangelical, 
the  cynic,  the  sacramentarian,  each  finds  his  comrades 
responding  to  him.  One  must  know  the  man  to  weigh  his 
evidence. 

But  the  difficulties  are  much  deeper  than  this.  It  is 
not  alone  the  reports  that  are  conflicting.  It  is  the  facts 
themselves.  And  there  is  every  reason  why  that  should 
be  so.  The  4,000,000  men  who  trained  and  served  in  the 
army  did  not  have  identical  experiences  by  any  means. 
Some  1,914,000  never  got  beyond  the  American  training 
camps ;  696,000  reached  the  back  areas,  the  S.  O.  S.,  in 
France ;  1,390,000  served  for  longer  or  shorter  periods  in 
advanced  areas.  The  conditions  were  obviously  very 
different  in  these  three  areas.  And  the  same  man  was 
not  the  same  man  under  varying  conditions.  There  were 
the  exciting  days  before  embarkation,  the  restful  or  pain- 
ful days  in  hospital,  the  days  after  the  armistice  filled 
with  impatience  and  complaint,  perhaps  with  excess. 
The  whole  atmosphere  changed,  and  we  have  seen  how 
greatly  men  are  affected  by  the  atmosphere  around  them. 
Officers  differed  from  privates.  Maine  farmers  differed 
from  East  Side  immigrants.  Boston  Irish  differed  from 
southern  Negroes.  Kansas  "drys"  differed  from  New 
England  "wets."    "Different  individuals  would  see  the 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


same  thing  in  different  lights.  The  same  individual 
would  find  quite  different  conditions  in  different  locali- 
ties." 

For  every  comprehensive  statement  there  are  so  many 
qualifications  to  be  added  that  one  is  often  tempted  to 
despair  of  all  generalization.  But  it  is  for  trustworthy 
generalizations  that  we  must  try,  since  it  is  only  in  broad 
outlines  that  we  can  see  our  problem  whole. 

PLAN  OF  STUDY 

The  subject  of  religion  in  the  army  falls  quite  naturally 
into  two  general  divisions:  (I)  the  state  of  religion  as 
revealed  in  the  army  and  (II)  the  effect  of  military 
training  and  war  on  religion.  A  very  large  proportion  of 
the  moral  or  religious  facts  evident  in  the  army  were  but 
the  revealing  or  magnifying  of  the  situation  in  civil  life. 
Men  came  into  the  army  with  certain  ideas  and  attitudes 
and  habits.  The  army  gave  them  publicity.  The  effect 
of  military  training  and  war  on  religion  is  a  distinct  sub- 
ject, much  more  difficult  and  uncertain.  Of  course  there 
are  many  cases  where  it  is  almost  impossible  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  religious  and  moral  life  carried  into 
the  war  and  the  effects  of  the  war  in  modifying  that  life, 
but  in  general  the  two  divisions  hold  and  are  important. 

A  brief  third  section  will  consider  certain  lessons  for 
the  Church  suggested  by  the  results  of  these  inves- 
tigations. 


PART  I 


THE  STATE  OF  RELIGION  AS 
REVEALED  IN  THE  ARMY 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY 

The  great  majority  of  men  in  the  army  were  nominal 
Christians.  A  large  proportion  had  some  slight  church 
connection.  The  number  of  active,  conscious  Christians 
or  church  members  was  relatively  small.  The  number  of 
avowed  unbelievers,  atheists,  and  agnostics  was  almost 
nil.  This  is  the  general  opinion  that  comes  with  great 
unanimity  from  chaplains  and  other  religious  workers. 

THE  PROPORTION  OF  CHRISTIANS 
The  great  majority  of  men  were  nominal  Christians, 
at  least  to  the  extent  that  they  would  express  some 
church  preference  when  asked  to  do  so.  In  July  and 
August,  1918,  a  religious  census  was  taken  at  Camp 
Devens,  Mass.,  through  the  cooperation  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.,  the  camp  pastors  and  the  military  authorities.  It 
covered  25,607  men.  Of  this  number  only  586  failed  to 
express  some  church  preference — approximately  two  per 
cent  of  the  whole  number.  In  a  religious  census  of  1,487 
men  in  the  base  hospital  at  a  southern  camp,  only  sixteen 
expressed  no  preference. 

Such  figures  as  those  secured  in  a  religious  census  in 
the  army  do  not  have  much  value  in  estimating  definite 
church  connection.  In  any  census  conducted  in  part  by 
military  authority  there  is  a  considerable  amount  of 
rather  forced  and  artificial  selection.  Church  preference 
often  meant  no  more  than  that  the  man's  mother  was  of 
such  and  such  afiiHation  and  that  he  would  prefer  to  be 
married  or  buried  by  such  and  such  a  minister.  But  the 
mere  expression  of  some  preference  by  the  great  majority 


10      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


of  men  indicates  a  very  general  acceptance  of  a  nominal 
Christian  affiliation.  And  the  testimony  of  chaplains^ 
confirms  this  judgment: 

"Almost  every  man  claimed  membership  in  some 
church,  often  mere  preference." 

"A  very  large  percentage  have  some  connection  with 
the  Church  and  feel  that  they  belong  to  it.  I  would  place 
it  as  high  as  90  per  cent." 

"I  was  assigned  to  the  Seventeenth  Infantry,  and  in 
making  a  religious  census  of  the  organization  I  dis- 
covered that  the  great  majority  held  to  some  faith, 
either  Catholic  or  Protestant." 

"A  majority  of  my  men  were  nominal  Christians  and 
claimed  some  church  connection." 

"Most  men  were  nominal  Christians  and  did  claim 
some  church  connection." 

When  we  turn  to  the  question  of  definite  church  con- 
nection in  the  form  of  baptism,  profession  of  faith  or 
confirmation,  there  are  no  accurate  figures  available. 
Various  estimates  are  made  but  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  weigh  or  compare  them  because  the  extent  of  church 
connection  upon  which  the  judgments  are  based  is  un- 
known. When  one  chaplain  says  "Almost  85  per  cent  are 
members  of  some  Church"  and  another  that  "about  30 
per  cent  were  members  of  some  recognized  Church,"  it 
is  clear  that  they  are  not  dealing  with  the  same  thing. 
In  general  it  is  fair  to  say  that  chaplains  believe  a  large 
proportion  of  men  have  some  slight  church  connection. 
Many  have  been  baptized,  many  have  attended  Church 
or  Sunday  school  as  children,  many  have  joined  the 
Church  in  youth.  There  would  be  considerable  agree- 
ment on  such  statements  as  these: 

"I  find  that  nearly  all  the  men  in  this  Base  Hospital 
had  some  kind  of  training  in  the  Christian  religion." 

"The  men  have  been  almost  invariably  under  religious 
influence  of  some  sort  in  childhood." 


'  "Chaplains"  will  be  loosely  used  throughout  this  report  to  include  not 
only  commissioned  chaplains  but  also  camp  pastors  and  secretaries  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A. 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY  11 


Nominal  Christians  and  nominal  church  members  are 
numerous,  but  real  Christians  and  active  church  mem- 
bers are  few.  By  Christians  in  this  report  we  do  not 
mean  saints;  we  mean  men  largely  motivated  by  loyalty 
to  Christ  and  His  teachings.*  By  active  church  members 
we  do  not  mean  "ecclesiastical  laymen,"  we  mean  men 
with  a  definite  loyalty  to  some  branch  of  the  great  Chris- 
tian community,  who  feel  responsible  for  its  hfe  and  are 
nurtured  by  its  ministrations.  That  such  men  are  a 
small  minority  is  the  clear  testimony. 

"Few  are  genuine  churchmen."  "A  small  number  were 
faithful;  a  larger  number  irregular  and  the  majority 
indifferent." 

"The  Churches  ought  to  recognize  that  they  have  never 
gained  the  interest  and  enthusiasm  of  eight  out  of  ten  of 
the  generation  just  coming  to  maturity.  As  far  as  vital 
motivations  go,  these  fellows  are  not  Christians  at  all,  but 
merely  more  or  less  decent  young  pagans."^ 

"Probably  15  per  cent  would  be  near  to  the  number  of 
men  who  previous  to  entering  the  service  had  a  vital 
religious  connection."  "Perhaps  15  per  cent  were  vital 
Christians."  "The  real  Christian  soldiers  were  as  few 
as  the  harvest  was  great  in  every  instance.  I  speak  of 
the  masses  of  young  men  over  whom  I  had  spiritual  over- 
sight and  not  of  the  faithful  few  who  can  always  be 
found  anywhere." 

The  figures  quoted  by  these  correspondents  are  not 
significant  except  as  attempts  to  visualize  the  situation. 
They  do  not  pretend  to  be  statistical,  but  they  do  give 
an  impression.^** 

•The  question  as  to  the  extent  to  which  we  should  expect  men  to  be 
consciously  Christian  might  well  be  raised,  both  here  and  elsewhere  in  this 
report.  A  member  of  the  Committee  has  raised  the  query  "whether  we  are 
not  looking  too  much  to  the  conscious,  too  little  to  the  subconscious,  atti- 
tudes of  our  men;  and  whether  there  is  not  something  quite  normal  in  the 
main  phenomenon  which  impresses  us  in  these  studies — the  comparative 
faintness  of  the  conscious  religious  attachments  and  professions  on  the  part 
of  many  men." 

'  B.  I.  Bell.  "The  Church  and  the  Civilian  Young  Man,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 

"  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  same  impression  is  shared  by  three  of 
the  most  widely  read  British  chaplains.  T.  W.  Pym  in  "Papers  from 
Picardy"  writes:  "Christian  believers  are  of  course  the  smallest  class  numeri- 
cally; it  is  always  amazing  that  any  one  can  succeed  in  persuading  himself 
that  English  men  and  women  who  believe  in  Jesus  as  their  Saviour  and  try 
to  follow  Him  are  in  anything  but  a  minority."  Norman  MacLean  in  "God 
and  the  Soldier"  says:  "It  would  be  idle  to  pretend  that  the  majority  of  our 


12     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


Whether  these  reports  summon  up  the  picture  of  a 
great  overgrown  body  with  a  spark  of  Hfe  at  its  center  or 
that  of  a  little  leaven  slowly  leavening  the  whole  lump 
will  depend  on  a  man's  faith.  Whether  they  are  sur- 
prising or  not  will  depend  on  a  man's  expectations.  The 
conditions  are,  of  course,  but  the  projection  of  the  situa- 
tion in  civilian  life. 

A  recent  writer  in  the  religious  press  reports  on  his 
own  confirmation  of  this  situation : 

"Some  people  may  think  that  these  unpleasant  facts 
fit  some  other  church,  but  as  far  as  their  own  church  is 
concerned  they  are  satisfied  by  the  number  of  names  that 
it  has  on  its  Honor  Roll.  A  study  of  the  Honor  Roll  of  a 
number  of  churches  shows  that  many  of  the  men  whose 
names  are  enrolled  there  are  really  out  of  touch  with  the 
Church.  Most  pastors  have  placed  the  name  of  every 
man  that  has  left  his  parish  for  service,  in  either  the  army 
or  navy,  on  the  Honor  Roll  of  the  Church.  If  a  family 
calls  on  a  minister  to  conduct  their  funeral  services  or  to 
perform  their  marriage  ceremonies  they  are  naturally 
considered  a  part  of  that  parish.  When  their  boy  has 
been  called  to  the  colors  they  like  to  know  that  his  name 
is  on  the  Honor  Roll  of  the  Church.  The  Churches 
have  recognized  this  desire  and  gladly  placed  these  names 
on  their  Honor  Rolls. 

"A  questionnaire  was  recently  sent  out  to  all  the 
churches  of  a  near-by  presbytery.  This  group  of  churches 
....  included  both  large  and  small,  strong  and  weak, 
country  and  suburban  churches.  It  represented  a  dis- 
tinctly American  church-going  community.  Twenty-six 
churches  answered  these  questions.  Two  of  them  did  not 
tabulate  their  answers  because  of  the  peculiar  local 
conditions  in  a  small  village,  the  Honor  Roll  being  a 
village  and  not  a  church  affair.  These  twenty-four 
answers  showed  that  the  churches  represented  had  665 
names  on  their  Honor  Rolls.  One  hundred  and  ninety- 
five  of  these  men  were  active  in  church  work,  351, 
including  the  active  church  workers,  were  regular  in 
attendance  at  churches,  and  246  seldom  or  never  attended 

soldiers  are  in  any  vital  connection  with  the  Church."  A.  H.  Gray  in  "As 
Tommy  Sees  Us"  writes:  "A  large  majority  of  the  adult  males  remain 
outside  all  religious  organization  and  apparently  indifferent  to  religion." 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY  13 


church.  The  discrepancy  between  the  total  number  and 
the  sum  of  those  who  attended  church  and  those  who  did 
not  attend  was  due  to  the  number  of  men  away  from 

home,  either  at  college  or  at  work  The  figures  are 

startling.  Out  of  the  665  names  on  the  Honor  Rolls  of 
these  churches  only  about  half  of  them  are  known  to  be 
regular  church  attendants  and  246  are  seldom  or  never  at 
church.  This  study  of  the  Honor  Roll  churches  shows 
that  the  same  state  of  affairs  exists  at  home  as  existed  in 
a  cantonment.  The  Honor  Roll  does  not  show  the  num- 
ber of  men  that  have  been  interested  in  the  Church.  It 
shows  instead  the  number  of  men  in  whom  the  Church  is 
interested,  which  is  a  very  different  thing.    It  shows  the 

number  of  men  that  the  Church  is  responsible  for  

"All  these  facts  seem  to  indicate  that  the  Church  is  not 
holding  its  young  men.  I  have  no  means  of  estimating 
the  number  of  men  that  do  not  happen  to  have  their 
names  on  the  Honor  Roll  of  any  church,  but  I  have  no 
doubt  that  it  is  a  goodly  proportion  of  all  the  men  in  a 
camp.  They  are  entirely  unchurched  and  no  church  has 
a  feeling  of  responsibility  for  them." 

This  situation  is  of  course  not  new,  but  in  the  army  we 
have  seen  it  with  a  clarity  and  convincingness  that  can- 
not be  escaped.  In  so  far  as  we  have  tended  to  think  of 
the  Churches  as  the  nation  in  its  religious  capacity  we 
have  been  far  from  the  truth.  Judging  by  the  army,  we 
have  a  large  majority  of  nominal  Christians,  a  very 
considerable  body  of  nominal  Church  members  and  a 
small  nucleus  of  conscious  Christians  and  active  church 
members.  America  is  not  a  Christian  nation  in  any 
strictly  religious  sense;  it  is  a  mission  field. 

If  definite  believers  are  a  small  minority,  it  is  quite  as 
clear  that  definite  unbelievers  are  almost  negligible  from 
the  point  of  view  of  numbers.  Of  the  25,607  registered 
in  the  census  at  Camp  Devens  two  called  themselves 
agnostic,  five  atheistic,  two  freethinkers,  four  "no  reli- 
gion," while  586  expressed  no  church  preference.  Of 
the  1,487  registered  at  the  southern  camp  sixteen  avowed 


"  Edwin  A.  McAlpin,  Jr.,  "Cantonment  and  Christianity,"  in  The  Pres- 
byterian Advance. 


14     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


no  religion.  And  these  results  are  in  general  accord  with 
the  observations  of  chaplains: 

"There  was  only  one  case  in  the  entire  six  months  that 
I  was  in  Boulogne  of  a  man  signing  'None'  as  his  religion" 
and  that  man  signed  'Atheist.'  "  "I  have  met  only  one 
man  who  professed  to  be  an  infidel." 

WIDESPREAD  IGNORANCE  AS  TO  THE  MEANING  OF 
CHRISTIANITY  AND  CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 

If  there  is  any  one  point  upon  which  chaplains  agree 
it  is  in  regard  to  the  widespread  ignorance  as  to  the 
meaning  of  Christianity  and  church  membership.  It  is 
of  course  one  thing  to  be  a  Christian  and  quite  another 
to  know  what  Christianity  is.  It  is  one  thing  to  be  a 
living  member  of  the  body  of  the  Church  and  another 
to  know  what  the  Church  stands  for  and  what  member- 
ship in  it  involves.  We  might  well  hope  that  in  a 
"Christian"  country  men  generally,  even  those  without 
any  allegiance  to  Christ  or  His  Church,  would  know  what 
Christianity  is.  Chaplains  say  that  they  do  not  know. 
And  they  go  beyond  that  and  say  that  men  nominally 
within  the  Church,  men  who  have  been  to  Christian 
schools,  are  in  much  the  same  condition.  They  do  not 
have  the  Christian  idea  of  God;  they  have  no  clear 
knowledge  of  Christ;  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  often  a 
meaningless  term  to  them;  the  meaning  of  Christian 
prayer,  the  use  of  sacraments,  the  obligations  of  church 
membership  are  very,  very  vague  to  them.  The  Church 
as  a  teacher  has  failed  to  instruct  its  own  membership 
and  present  its  Gospel  to  the  men  just  outside  its  doors. 
Perhaps  the  unanimity  on  this  point  can  best  be  demon- 
strated by  liberal  quotation  from  chaplains. 

"The  imperative  need  of  teaching.  The  average  young 
American  knows  very  little  about  God,  Christ,  prayer, 
faith." 

"The  great  need  is  definite  instruction.    I  find  that 
most  men  know  little  or  nothing  of  Christian  dogma." 
"They  have  had  little  or  no  religious  training." 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY 


15 


"Beyond  the  religious  training  of  the  first  ten  years 
few  have  advanced." 

"The  first  thing  that  I  noticed  among  the  men  in  the 
camps  was  a  very  prevalent  lack  of  any  definite  religious 
teaching.  This  was  true  of  men  of  all  denominations; 
comparatively  few  of  them  had  any  reason  for  the  faith 
that  was  in  them." 

"A  small  proportion  of  church  members  had  clear 
ideas  as  to  what  Christianity  is  or  what  church  member- 
ship involves.  You  cannot  overstress  the  widespread  re- 
sults of  the  lack  of  definite  Christian  education. 

"Should  we  not  include  education  in  the  idea  of  the 
kingdom  of  God?  I  found  when  it  came  to  this  that  I 
had  to  begin  at  the  beginning  and  lead  men  gradually  to 
the  idea.  Not  one  in  a  hundred  had  apparently  ever 
heard  of  it.  I  mean  among  the  church-goers.  Religion 
was  to  them  a  personal  and  individual  matter.  Of  course 
that  must  be  the  foundation,  but  it  ought  not  stop  there, 
and  as  far  as  I  can  see  ministers  in  general  have  been 
letting  it  stop  there,  or  have  been  so  vague  about  the 
kingdom  that  men  haven't  caught  the  idea  at  all." 

"What  happened  in  Private  B's  case  and  in  that  of 
many  others  is  simply  this :  When  he  turned  his  thoughts 
inward  and  started  to  draw  on  his  religious  knowledge  he 
discovered  he  had  practically  none.  What  he  did  have, 
what  he  remembered  from  the  teaching  of  his  church  at 
home,  seemed  utterly  inadequate  to  meet  the  situation. "^^ 

"I  honestly  beHeve  that  three-fourths  of  the  men  who 
went  into  the  camps  had  only  a  hazy  and  very  unvital 
idea  of  Christianity,  despite  our  Sunday  schools,  etc. ; 
and  that  these  defects  of  teaching  must  be  remedied  at 
once." 

"The  paucity  of  his  knowledge  about  the  Bible  and  the 
church  has  appalled  me  and  made  me  realize  how  super- 
ficial has  been  the  impact  of  the  Church  upon  him." 

"To  my  mind  the  important  thing  is  the  revelation  of 
general  ignorance  about  church  and  religion  and  so  of  the 
almost  total  failure  of  the  teaching  work  of  the  Church." 

In  this  connection  the  following  observations  made  in 
regard  to  the  results  of  the  Roman  Catholic  and  Lutheran 
systems  of  religious  education  by  chaplains  of  another 
denomination  are  of  interest : 


"A.  S.  Lane,  in  The  Living  Church. 


16      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


"The  large  majority  do  not  know  what  they  believe 
outside  the  Roman  Catholics  and  the  Lutherans." 

"My  own  personal  experience  was  that  the  Lutherans 
had  as  good  a  hold  on  their  own  men  in  service  as  anyone, 
not  excepting  the  Roman  Catholics.  Their  training  was 
definite  and  they  were  clear  in  what  they  believed.  Here 
we  find  the  lasting  influence  of  the  parochial  school. "^^ 

Apparently  this  experience  of  failure  is  not  confined  to 
the  Church  in  the  United  States.  A  report  based  on  in- 
quiries among  Anglican  chaplains  in  the  Canadian  Chap- 
lains Service  finds  that  the  primary  shortcoming  revealed 
in  the  Canadian  army  is  a  lack  of  definite  and  adequate 
teaching  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Christian 
faith.  And  in  England  the  Report  of  the  Archbishops' 
First  Committee  of  Inquiry  has  this  to  say  on  the  situa- 
tion found  in  the  British  army :  "It  is  pointed  out  in  our 
army,  that  while  70  per  cent  of  the  soldiers  are  described 
as  'C.  of  E.'"  only  an  insignificant  proportion  has  either 
any  real  knowledge  of  what  a  churchman  is  supposed  to 
believe  or  any  practical  appreciation  of  the  use  of  the 
sacraments.  Even  though  it  must  be  remembered  that  of 
those  officially  known  as  'C.  of  E.'  a  large  number  cannot 
be  regarded  as  genuine  members  of  the  Church,  this 
statement  is  startling  and  significant.  The  Church  can- 
not be  said  to  have  attained  the  end  which  it  set  before 
itself  at  the  Reformation,  namely,  that  the  laity  should  be 
really  instructed  in  Christian  faith  and  practice." 

In  terms  of  our  divided  American  Protestantism  the 
same  summary  would  express  the  judgment  of  our  chap- 
lains as  to  the  situation  found  in  the  American  army.  Our 
laity  are  not  really  instructed  in  Christian  faith  and 
practice. 

"  A  Lutheran  minister  of  wide  experience  makes,  however,  the  following 
comment:  "Among  the  Lutherans  of  the  Eastern  states  I  should  say  that 
probably  less  than  10  per  cent  have  ever  had  any  parochial  school  training; 
in  the  Western  states  the  percentage  would  be  higher  but  would  hardly 
reach  one  half.  The  real  secret  of  the  thing  is  the  catechetical  training 
which  precedes  confirmation  and  which  is  universal  in  the  Lutheran 
Churches." 

"  Church  of  England. 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY  17 


THE  FIDELITY  OF  THE  FAITHFUL 
It  would  give  a  false  and  one-sided  impression  of  the 
whole  situation  to  close  this  section  of  the  report  without 
grateful  reference  to  the  positive  Christianity  and  the 
loyalty  to  the  Church  of  the  minority  who  were  largely 
motivated  by  loyalty  to  Christ  and  His  teaching  and  who 
had  a  definite  relationship  to  the  Church.  In  camp  and 
hospital  and  front  lines  there  were  always  found  men  who 
were  strengthened  in  their  personal  morality,  sustained 
in  the  face  of  danger,  suffering,  loneliness  and  death,  and 
given  hope  and  idealism  in  the  midst  of  the  brutal  busi- 
ness of  war  by  their  personal  Christianity  and  their  con- 
nection with  the  Church.  They  went  beyond  the  morality 
of  the  group  or  the  literal  demands  of  army  discipline. 
They  had  a  strong  resolution,  in  the  face  of  the  excessive 
temptations  of  army  life,  which  kept  them  clean  morally 
as  well  as  medically  and  conserved  their  full  power  for 
the  service  of  their  cause. In  that  cause  they  saw  the 
purposes  of  God  and  in  that  faith  served  in  the  army 
freely  and  whole-heartedly  and  without  malice.  By 
prayer  they  bridged  the  distances  between  themselves  and 
those  they  loved  at  home.  In  the  sacraments  they  found 
constant  renewal.  By  faith  they  met  death,  not  with 
bravado  nor  stoicism,  but  with  assurance. 

One  of  the  significant  aspects  of  army  life  has  been  the 
large  place  that  the  chaplains  have  held  in  the  esteem  and 
aflfection  of  the  men.  A  minister  lately  back  from  France 
who  made  a  special  point  of  investigating  the  chaplains* 
work  in  the  A.  E.  F.  reports  that  after  talking  incognito 
with  hundreds  of  officers  and  men  he  had  found  an  almost 
unanimous  attitude  of  personal  regard  for  the  chaplains 
and  admiration  for  their  work.    But  such  an  attitude 


"  "Young  men  living  an  unnatural  life  under  war  conditions  have  one  or 
two  temptations  against  which  the  struggle  is  extraordinarily  difficult.  I  do 
not  say  that  every  definite  churchman  stands  upright,  still  less  that  every 
inarticulate  Christian  falls,  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  this  is  just  one  of  the 
things  in  which  definite  profession  of  allegiance  to  Christ  gives  a  strength 
which  a  vague,  inarticulate  Christianity  is  powerless  to  provide."  Geoffrey 
Gordon. 


18     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


towards  these  representatives  of  religion  indicates  some- 
thing more  important  than  the  fine  quaHties  of  the  chap- 
lains themselves — it  suggests  also  in  an  unmistakable  way 
that  there  was  a  real  demand  in  the  army  for  the  presence 
of  the  minister  of  religion,  services  of  worship  and  Chris- 
tian work.  The  chaplains  could  not  have  received  the 
standing  that  they  did  receive  in  the  estimation  of  the 
men  nor  could  they  have  effectively  carried  on  their  reli- 
gious work  unless  in  every  unit  in  the  army  there  had 
been  not  only  a  general  interest  in  religion  but  also  many 
devoted  Christian  men  who  carried  their  Christian  loyalty 
through  all  the  testings  of  the  war. 

War  commissions  and  pastors  throughout  the  nation 
have  hosts  of  letters  expressing  the  gratitude  of  men  for 
the  ministrations  of  the  Church  and  testifying  to  the 
central  place  which  their  church  connection  has  had  in 
the  making  and  sustaining  of  their  lives.  Such  men  co- 
operated generously  with  chaplains  and  camp  pastors 
and  welfare  workers  and  local  churches,  adding  to  their 
military  duties  a  free  service  to  the  Church.  In  their 
units  they  stood  for  their  religion  with  frankness  and 
simplicity.  In  their  personal  religious  habits  they  were 
faithful  and  as  constant  in  uniting  with  the  corporate 
worship  of  the  Church  as  the  pressure  and  uncertainty  of 
military  life  would  permit. 

A  Y.  M.  C.  A.  worker  overseas  tells  of  a  private  who, 
in  the  absence  of  any  chaplain  in  the  unit,  gathered  a  little 
group  together  "to  read  the  Bible  and  talk  over  the  things 
they  read."  A  chaplain  in  a  reconstruction  hospital 
reports  that  two  or  three  privates,  entirely  on  their  own 
initiative,  organized  an  enthusiastic  Christian  Endeavor 
Society  among  the  convalescent  patients.  "We  thought," 
said  the  leader  of  the  group,  "that  since  it  had  helped  us 
at  home  to  be  in  a  Young  People's  Society  it  would  help 
us  here  and  might  also  encourage  some  of  the  other  boys 
who  hadn't  thought  much  of  the  Church  before."  A 
letter  from  a  man  in  France  to  his  mother,  just  after  his 


THE  MEN  AND  CHRISTIANITY  19 


brother  had  been  killed  in  action,  is  typical  for  revealing 
the  strength  of  character  that  draws  its  nourishment  from 
faith  in  Christ  and  from  Christian  training: 

"What  a  pity  it  is  that  so  many  people  lack  a  solid  back- 
ing in  God !  It  is  so  manifest  over  here.  I  see  nearly 
every  day  men  of  all  ages  who  fall  utterly  before  the 

slightest  temptation  that  crosses  their  path  They 

are  so  pitiful.    They  never  have  had  God  I  so 

often  wonder  why  I  have  had  this  wonderful  opportunity 
and  advantage,  which  so  many  people  never  had — to  be 
reared  in  a  truly  Christian  home.  Isn't  it  wonderful  what 
Christ  can  do  for  us?  Nothing  really  matters  if  we  keep 
close  to  Him — and  so  few  know  that !" 

One  hesitates  to  give  such  illustrations  as  these  of  the 
fidelity  of  Christian  men  lest  they  should  seem  to  the 
reader  to  be  exceptional  instances  rather  than  typical. 
They  are  not  unusual, — every  chaplain  has  similar  stories 
of  his  own.  A  rehgious  work  director  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
in  a  great  training  camp  throughout  the  war  could  even 
say: 

"My  two  years  at  introduced  me  into  a  com- 
munity which  was  a  continual  inspiration  to  me,  and  the 
transformations  in  human  lives  were  to  me  new  chapters 
in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles." 

One  army  surgeon  will  suffice  for  final  illustration  of 
the  thousands  of  Christian  men  who  like  him  commanded 
the  admiration  and  devotion  of  all  with  whom  they  came 
in  contact.  The  major  of  his  regiment  writes  of  this 
particular  doctor: 

"He  was  a  man  of  quiet,  unobtrusive  yet  strong,  un- 
selfish and  distinctive  personality,  always  cheerful,  giving 
his  whole-hearted  devotion  to  the  care  of  the  men.  I 
considered  him  one  of  the  highest  types  of  Christian 
character,  and  I  discovered  that  he  was  continuously  en- 
gaged in  some  Christian  work.  He  had  had  a  Bible  class 
in  my  battalion  for  some  six  months,  which  he  founded 
and  conducted  and  he  was  generally  looked  upon  as  the 
most  genuine  chaplain  we  had.  He  was  always  on  the  job 
as  a  regimental  surgeon,  and  at  the  same  time  always  on 


20     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


the  j6b  in  all  religious  work.  I  considered  him  a  rare 
man.  He  was  very  capable,  always  mentally  wide  awake 
and  was  considered  by  me,  my  officers  and  men  as  one  of 
the  most  sincere  and  genuine  Christians  we  knew.  The 
battalion  had  consistently  the  best  health  record  in  the 
regiment." 

There  was  nothing  obtrusive  nor  religiously  profes- 
sional about  this  surgeon.  He  was  simply  a  Christian 
layman  who  carried  his  Christian  faith  and  his  Christian 
life  with  him  wherever  he  went  and  who  made  Chris- 
tianity a  winning  and  beautiful  thing  to  the  men  of  his 
regiment. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH 

In  the  current  discussions  of  religion  in  the  army,  there 
has  been  considerable  emphasis  on  the  criticism  of  the 
Church  and  the  Christianity  of  the  Church  expressed  by 
"the  man  in  the  street."  It  is  clear  that  the  British  chap- 
lains both  found  and  expressed  a  good  deal  of  criticism. 
Most  of  the  English  books  on  religion  in  the  army,  such 
as  "A  Student  in  Arms,"  "Papers  from  Picardy,"  "As 
Tommy  Sees  Us,"  "The  Church  in  the  Furnace,"  and 
"God  and  the  Soldier,"  deal  with  it. 

Were  these  criticisms  of  the  Church  and  the  religion  it 
preaches  found  in  the  American  army?  They  were 
certainly  found.  But  their  actual  extent  and  seriousness 
are  very  hard  to  weigh.  Chaplains  sometimes  heard  them. 
Chaplains  frequently  express  them  on  their  own  account 
or  in  an  effort  to  explain  men's  alienation  from  the 
Church.  The  criticisms  are  quite  as  interesting  and  im- 
portant as  coming  from  many  Christian  ministers  in 
service  as  from  "the  man  in  the  street."  Probably  they 
were  far  more  common  among  officers  and  college  men 
than  among  men  generally.  At  any  rate  they  were  found. 
But  that  is  very  diflferent  from  saying  that  they  repre- 
sent the  opinions  of  the  average  soldier.  Many  American 
soldiers  belonged  to  some  branch  of  the  Church  and  were 
contented  in  their  membership.  Many  more  respected 
it  as  representative  of  the  goodness  and  piety  of  those 
they  loved.  Many  were  so  indiflferent  to  the  Church  that 
they  spent  little  time  thinking  about  it,  either  favorably 
or  otherwise.   Some  criticized  it. 

In  so  far  as  their  criticisms  can  be  gathered  up  they 


22     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


group  themselves  under  two  heads  :  (1)  Criticisms  of  the 
Church  for  inadequacy  in  its  moral  ideal  and  moral  life 
and  (2)  Criticisms  of  the  Church  for  unreality  or 
triviality. 

CRITICISMS  OF  THE  CHURCH  FOR  INADEQUACY  IN 
ITS  MORAL  IDEAL  AND  MORAL  LIFE 
In  any  discussion  of  the  criticisms  that  are  commonly 
made  of  the  Church  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  know 
how  to  estimate  their  real  significance.  What  men  lightly 
say  about  the  Church  does  not  necessarily  represent  their 
own  inner  attitude  to  it.  Superficial  criticisms  may  sim- 
ply be  a  way  of  excusing  their  own  indifference  to  any 
spiritual  interpretation  of  life.  Nevertheless  it  is  im- 
portant for  us  to  give  thoughtful  attention  to  what  men 
do  say. 

The  following  are  typical  of  the  criticisms  reported  or 
expressed  by  chaplains : 

1.  That  the  religion  preached  by  the  Church  is  pri- 
marily a  selfish  thing — the  seeking  of  a  personal  reward. 
That  it  is  "all  an  elaborate  attempt  to  make  sure  their 
own  salvation  or  compass  their  own  spiritual  growth. 
The  motive  behind  it  all  is  self-regarding." 

"Some  men  here  seem  to  feel  that  to  be  religious  means 
that  you  are  worried  as  to  what  will  happen  to  you  when 
you  'go  west.'  " 

"Men  have  been  taught  to  save  their  own  precious 
hides.  The  end  of  religion  seemed  to  be  getting  men  into 
heaven,  not  fitting  them  to  live  on  earth."    (An  officer.) 

"How  intolerable  to  those  who  have  caught  the  devo- 
tion of  the  army  is  a  certain  habitual  selfishness  in  the 
Church's  appeal  to  men !  If  in  France  today,  in  speaking 
of  soldiers,  anyone  suggests  that  they  will  soon  die,  that 
if  they  do  they  may  go  to  hell  unless  they  are  'prepared,' 
and  that  therefore  they  had  better  believe  something 
religious  to  avoid  the  contingency,  that  man  incontinently 
shuts  up  or  else  he  leaves  France,  or  more  probably  he 

does  both  There  is  a  fundamental  antipathy 

between  such  talk  and  the  spirit  in  which  the  whole  army 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH 


23 


is  living.  The  former  is  thoroughly  self-centered.  The 
latter  is  gloriously  self-forgetful."  ....  "Come  to  God 
that  you  may  be  safe — will  that  do?  Come  to  God  for 
there  is  in  His  hands  solace  for  believers — will  that  do? 
....  Will  any  mean,  self-centered  motive  do?"^* 

2.  That  Christianity  as  presented  by  the  Church  is 
mainly  a  negative,  prohibitory  thing,  a  collection  of 
"don'ts,"  a  matter  of  abstinence. 

"They  are  looking  upon  the  Church  as  a  negative,  pro- 
hibitory institution  only." 

"Each  of  them  knows  a  clergyman  whom  he  likes,  but 
they  regard  the  profession  as  an  association  of  trained 
kill-joys." 

"The  men  of  the  army  quarrel  with  the  negativeness 

of  the  churches'  ethics  The  soldiers  seriously 

think  that  the  character  which  the  churches  seek  con- 
sists of  little  more  than  abstinence  from  a  multitude  of 

pleasurable  things  The  righteousness  of  the 

saints,  in  the  general  estimation  of  the  army,  is  little  more 
than  anti — anti-dance,  theater,  cards,  drink,  smoke,  pro- 
fanity, and  all  fun  on  Sundays. "^^ 

3.  That  even  if  the  moral  standards  of  the  Church  are 
good,  Church  members  do  not  live  up  to  them.  Church 
members  are  not  marked  by  their  positive  sacrificial 
goodness.  In  fact  their  lives  are  often  peculiarly  color- 
less or  narrow  or  effetninate.  They  are  frequently  harsh 
and  ungenerous  in  their  judgments  of  other  men.  The 
individual  lives  of  professing  Christians  are  not  good 
enough  to  attract  and  convert. 

"What  is  needed  is  not  a  new  Church  but  a  new  spirit 
in  its  members." 

"Whatever  antipathy  to  the  Church  may  be  found  is 
usually  traced  to  the  hypocrisy  of  some  persons  con- 
nected with  the  Church,  which  has  caused  the  observer  to 
adopt  an  attitude  of  cynicism." 

"Lack  of  sincerity  in  living.  Our  ethical  demands  of  a 
constructive  sort  are  not  high  enough.   We  do  not  sacri- 


"  H.  E.  Fosdick,  "The  Trenches  and  the  Church  at  Home,"  Atlantic 
Monthly. 
"  Ibid. 


24     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


fice  enough  to  make  any  real  impression  upon  these 
young  fellows  who  pitilessly  observe  that  we  who  worship 
the  Supreme  Sacrifice  are  not  very  good  sacrificers,  and 
that  the  Church  condones  our  ill  success  at  it." 

4.  That  in  the  life  within  the  Churches  there  is  not  the 
generous  and  unaffected  comradeship  which  would  be 
appropriate.  The  Church  talks  of  brotherhood,  men  say, 
but  it  is  not  a  brotherhood  itself.  It  has  not  the  "all-one- 
body  feeling."  The  class  distinctions  "of  this  world"  are 
carried  over  with  little  alleviation  into  the  fellowship  of 
believers.  And  the  interests  and  contentments  of  the 
possessing  classes  in  the  existing  economic  order  blind 
avowed  Christians  to  the  needs  and  aspirations  of  the 
great  body  of  men. 

"For  quite  a  while  I  have  looked  for  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  work  of  the  Christian  Church  and  according 
to  my  way  of  thinking  it  is  damned  hard  to  find  it." 
(An  enlisted  man.) 

"In  practically  every  church  there  is  a  social  standard 
set  and  only  those  persons  are  welcome  who  grade  up  to 
that  standard.  They  do  not  actually  throw  you  out 
bodily,  but  they  throw  you  out  by  the  attitude  they  take. 
If  you  are  under-grade  they  do  not  notice  you  at  all." 
(An  enlisted  man.) 

"The  Church  caters  altogether  too  much  to  the 
moneyed  class."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

"My  church  in  West  Virginia  is  supported  by  a  rich 
man  in  a  mining  community,  where  he  owns  everything, 
including  the  soul  of  the  minister." 

"Out  in  the  oil  country  of  the  West  its  ministers  cater 
to  the  oil  barons."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

"At  the  end  of  the  sermon  a  keen  young  fellow  came 
up  and  said :  'Chaplain,  that  was  saying  something  all 

right,  but  it  is  mighty  funny  talk  from  an  .  I've 

been  around  to  a  lot  of  your  churches,  and  I  never  saw 
one  yet  where  the  man  with  the  long  green,  no  matter 
what  sort  of  a  fellow  he  was,  didn't  run  things  pretty 
much  to  suit  himself.  Lots  of  folks  believe  that  with  you 
plunder  is  a  sure  sign  of  piety.  You're  training  with  the 
wrong  team.' 

"  B.  I.  Bell,  in  The  Churchman. 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH 


25 


"Comradeship  is  the  glory  of  the  army,  and  in  the 
comradeship  previous  wealth,  rank,  occupation  do  not 

count  I  do  not  see  how  these  soldiers  are  coming 

back  to  many  of  our  churches,  where  pews  are  owned  or 
rented,  and  where  the  congregation  is  so  seated  that  a 
man's  relative  income  can  be  estimated  by  his  compara- 
tive distance  from  the  altar  of  the  Lord's  sacrifice. 
.  .  .  .  There  is  a  shocking  incongruity  between  an 
attack  at  the  front — rich  and  poor,  learned  and  ignorant, 
prominent  and  obscure  going  over  the  top  together — and 
a  congregation  in  a  wealthy  metropolitan  church  singing: 
'Onward,  Christian  soldiers,  marching  as  to  war.' 

CRITICISMS  OF  THE  CHURCH  FOR  UNREALITY 
OR  TRIVIALITY 

1.  It  is  sadly  true  that  many  men  fail  to  see  in  the 
Church  primarily  a  company  of  people  committed  to  a 
common  view  of  life  and  following  a  common  way  of 
life.  They  think  of  it  in  terms  of  buildings  and  officials. 
As  such  it  seems  to  some  a  convenient  institution  for  the 
performance  of  conventional  ceremonies,  venerable,  re- 
spectable, but  not  much  concerned  with  the  real  business 
of  life. 

"Two  things  work  together  to  keep  men  out  of  the 
Churches.  First,  the  counter  attractions,  and  second,  the 
failure  of  the  Church  to  relate  its  life  to  the  vital  interests 
of  men's  life.  What  do  men  think  of  the  Churches? 
They  reverence  them  as  they  do  their  grandmother." 

"The  Church  to  them  is  not  representative  of  the  fight 
for  a  square  deal ;  it  is  for  the  women  and  children  and 
disconsolate.  You  go  there  to  be  married  and  buried, 
but  it  is  not  the  natural  resort  of  healthy,  active  men." 

"He  believes  the  Churches  should  be  supported  and  is 
willing  to  contribute  money  for  that  purpose,  but  services 
and  sermons  are  not  in  his  line,  frankly  they  bore  him." 

"I  find  a  general  belief  that  it  is  impossible  to  mix 
religion  with  business." 

2.  Much  that  the  Church  emphasizes  men  find  unim- 
portant, uninteresting,  and  not  especially  relevant  to 


"H.  E.  Fosdick,  "The  Trenches  and  the  Church  at  Home,"  Atlantic 
Monthly. 


26      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


Christianity.  In  sermons  and  services  it  often  seems 
interested  in  antiquarian  details  for  their  own  sake.  The 
tones  of  its  ministers  sound  artificial  to  some,  and  the 
language  of  its  sermons  and  liturgies  is  unintelligible  to 
many.^^ 

"The  charge  is  brought  against  the  organized  Church 
with  its  formulas  and  ceremonies  and  numberless  divi- 
sions that  it  has  'taken  tithe  of  mint,  anise,  and  cum- 
min and  omitted  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law.'  " 

"They  demand  reverence,  but  it  must  be  genuine, 
virile,  of  the  people,  not  of  the  choir,  free  from  holy  tones 
(which  are  just  as  common  to  Methodist  deacons  as  they 
are  to  Anglican  clergy),  downright  and  honest.  The 
amount  of  ritual  makes  no  difference — it  is  the  sincerity 
with  which  it  is  done  that  makes  the  difference." 

"The  belief  that  church  services  are  dry  and  uninter- 
esting and  have  a  message  chiefly  for  women  and  children 
accounts  in  some  degree  for  the  alienation  of  men." 

"The  war  has  disclosed  the  fact  that  many  Protestant 
ministers  have  been  out  of  touch  with  modern  life  and 
have  been  using  a  vocabulary  which  plain  men  find  mean- 
ingless. Virile  men  insist  upon  understanding  what  is 
said  and  having  what  is  said  spoken  in  plain  English  and 
to  the  point." 

"Sermons  as  usually  served  up  are  terribly  thin.  The 
minister  begins  by  saying,  T  take  my  text  this  morning, 
brethren,  from  so  and  so'  .  .  .  .,  and  then  spends  most 
of  his  time  in  telling  you  all  about  that  text,  and  who 
taught  it,  and  where  it  was  written.  If  that  same  minister 
preached  right  from  his  shoulder  against  adultery  and 
went  into  details,  that  would  be  real  preaching,  and  would 
count.  He  ought  to  preach  about  what  happens  in  1919, 
not  about  a  lot  of  details  concerning  Jonah  and  Jeremiah, 
and  Jesus  and  John."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

"If  we  could  choose  our  own  chaplain,  he  would  be 
something  of  this  order :  We  want  a  man-sized  man,  with 
a  real  man's  voice  when  he  talks  and  we  want  him  to  use 


"The  simple  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  the  reason  why  these  men  do 
not  go  to  Church  is  that  they  are  not  interested  in  the  things  which  the 
Church  provides.  They  are  at  one  with  the  Church  in  many  of  her  teach- 
ings, but  it  seems  to  them  that  she  expresses  those  teachings  in  a  different 
language  from  their  own,  different  not  only  in  words  but  in  habits  of 
thought  as  well.  To  them  the  Church  is  a  great  organized  unreality.  They 
neither  desire  it  nor  do  they  hate  it.  They  simply  leave  it  alone  as  a  thing 
entirely  out  of  their  line."    John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching." 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH  27 


ordinary  everyday  language  and  say  exactly  what  he 
means.  No  beating  around  the  bush,  just  plain,  unadul- 
terated facts.  We  want  his  talks  to  deal  with  the  facts 
of  today,  facts  that  we  can  apply  to  our  own  lives  and  we 
want  them  to  be  interesting  and  full  of  what  we  can  see  is 
truth,  and  last  but  not  least,  we  do  not  want  to  have  to 
sit  and  Hsten  to  him  for  three  hours  at  a  time." 

3.  That  the  "doings"  of  the  Church  and  the  tasks  it 
gives  men  to  do  are  often  so  trivial. 

"Men  of  ability  will  not  feel  like  doing  for  the  church 
something  which  some  office  boy  could  do  just  as  well." 

"What  these  men  want  is  not  a  lot  of  services,  nor  to  be 
urged  to  take  up  the  offering  or  usher,  but  an  actual  task 
to  accomplish  and  one  in  which  they  can  use  their  own 
personality.  To  have  such  work  to  give  these  men,  the 
objective  of  the  Church  must  be  not  her  own  preserva- 
tion, but  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  this  objective  must 
be  formulated  in  very  concrete  terms  that  seem  to  the 
soldier  to  be  worth  the  battle." 

"When  the  preacher  attempts  to  handle  practical  mat- 
ters he  jumps  in  on  matters  that  are  not  worth 

while ;  in  the  big  crises  he  seems  to  prefer  to  let  the  devil 
have  his  way." 

We  believe  that  many  American  chaplains  would  sub- 
scribe to  the  following  statement  in  a  recent  British 
report  on  the  condition  of  the  Church : 

"The  most  serious  difficulties  we  actually  find  in  prac- 
tice arise  from  the  fact  that  the  Church  is  not  good 
enough  rather  than  because  men  and  women  are  too  bad 

to  care  about  religion  They  demand  of  the 

Church  plain  evidence  of  the  vital  power  of  the  Chris- 
tianity it  professes.  They  ask  to  see  within  the  church 
more  sacrifice,  more  fellowship,  more  heroism,  more 
brotherhood,  more  zeal  for  the  uplifting  of  human  life 
and  for  the  regeneration  of  the  whole  social  order  than 
they  can  discover  within  its  border.  That  is  the  standard 
by  which  they  are  judging  the  Church  in  the  midst  of 
them."" 

The  criticisms  of  the  religious  work  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
in  certain  quarters  may  have  something  to  teach  the 


Report  of  the  Archbishops'  Third  Committee  of  Inquiry. 


28      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


Church,  quite  apart  from  the  question  as  to  whether  the 
criticisms  were  generally  justified.  They  indicate  certain 
failings  of  religious  organizations  to  which  some  classes 
of  men  are  especially  sensitive  and  which  they  find 
thoroughly  repellent.  The  things  most  commonly  criti- 
cized in  the  religious  work  of  the  Association  were  the 
following : 

1.  The  attempt  to  "capture"  men  rather  than  minister 
to  them,  or  to  minister  to  them  for  the  sake  of  making  a 
"capture."  What  men  respond  to  is  disinterested  service. 
Any  suggestion  that  they  are  being  fished  for  and  that 
some  pride  will  be  taken  in  "the  catch"  is  especially 
repellent. 

"Too  often  it  discounts  a  very  genuine  service  by  show- 
ing that  after  all  it  was  trying,  not  so  much  actually  to 
minister  to  as  to  capture  men." 

2.  The  deception  of  secreting  a  religious  appeal  in  a 
program  of  entertainment.  How  often  this  occurred  we 
do  not  know.  It  did  occur  occasionally  and  was  the 
source  of  considerable  criticism. 

"One  of  the  most  damnable  forms  of  insincerity  is  the 
camouflage  used  to  beguile  men  to  attend  services 
unknowingly.  A  man  goes  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  to  see  a 
moving  picture.  The  psychology  of  his  consciousness  is 
all  set  for  amusement  at  that  moment.  But,  no !  he  must 
pay  for  his  amusement  by  sitting  through  a  sermon,  and 
is  there  anything  more  unchristian  than  that?  Or  per- 
haps only  the  service  is  held  but  the  camouflagery  comes 
in  the  advertising.  'Hear  Dr.  So  and  So  of  Toledo  speak 
tonight.'  And  instead  of  a  lecture,  as  expected,  it  is  a 
regular  religious  service." 

"When  we  want  vaudeville,  we  know  where  to  get  it ; 
when  we  want  religion,  we  know  where  to  get  it.  We 
don't  want  it  mixed." 


"  Probably  this  criticism,  and  some  of  the  others,  were  found  mainly 
among  officers  rather  than  among  privates.  A  member  of  the  Committee 
who  had  experience  in  the  army  throughout  the  whole  period  of  the  war 
writes:  "The  ordinary  doughboy  as  I  met  him  took  religion  and  the  Church 

for  granted  He  did  not  worry  if  his  movies  and  sermons  were 

mixed  The  persons  who  were  sensitive  on  these  points  were  certain 

cynical,  indifferent,  college-bred  officers  who  had  to  find  something  wrong 
in  religion  as  presented  to  justify  their  not  engaging  in  its  service." 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH 


29 


3.  Condescension.  Men  are  remarkably  sensitive  to 
any  note  of  spiritual  pride,  self-consciousness,  or  self- 
satisfaction  in  a  religious  ministry.  A  ministry  is  suc- 
cessful and  wins  men's  confidence  just  in  so  far  as  its 
attitude  is  that  of  those  who  said,  "When  saw  we  thee  a 
hungered,  and  fed  thee?  or  thirsty,  and  gave  thee  drink?" 

"No  A.  E.  F.  man  from  now  on  will  pass  the  tam- 
bourine of  a  Salvation  Army  meeting  without  putting 
some  money  in  it.  Their  kind  of  religion  captured  our 
respect.  They  came  with  nothing,  but  they  gave  them- 
selves, and  brought  into  the  midst  of  our  terrible  experi- 
ence an  indispensable  something  which  we  call  the  Chris- 
tion  religion." 

4.  Red  Tape.  The  machinery  of  evangelism — the 
signing  of  pledge  cards — and  the  overregulating  of  prac- 
tical ministrations,  have  both  been  criticized. 

ATTITUDE  TOWARD  DENOMINATIONS 

Although  a  great  majority  of  the  men  expressed  some 
church  preference  when  urged  to,  it  is  quite  clear  that  the 
preference  was  not  very  emphatic.  Even  among  men 
who  were  on  the  fringe  of  active  membership  or  attended 
the  services  available  in  the  army  the  feeling  of  denomina- 
tional distinctions  appears  to  have  been  very  slight. 
There  was  of  course  a  fairly  sharp  line  between  Catholics 
and  Protestants.  "Since  becoming  divisional  chaplain 
I  find  that  the  denominational  problem  resolves  itself 
into  this  form.  There  are  Catholics  and  there  are 
Protestants.  The  via  media  is  utterly  incomprehensible 
to  the  ordinary  enlisted  man."  Unless  carefully  in- 
structed to  the  contrary,  men  frequently  expressed  their 
preference  in  terms  of  "Catholic"  or  "Protestant." 
Within  Protestantism  the  "unchurched  majority"  do  not 
find  the  divisions  especially  significant.  Indifference  to 
them  is  probably  more  characteristic  than  hostility. 

"The  soldier  knew  very  little  about  doctrinal  differences 
between  churches  and  cared  less.   It  seemed  senseless  to 


30      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


him  that  the  Protestant  Church  should  be  divided  into 
denominations."^^ 

"With  reference  to  denominations,  the  men  have  no 
comments  to  make  whatever,  simply  because  they  do  not 
think  deeply  enough  about  the  situation.  There  is  a  very 
widespread  feehng,  however,  that  it  doesn't  matter  much 
which  church  you  belong  to;  at  bottom  they  all  stand 
pretty  much  for  the  same  thing."    (An  enhsted  man.) 

"There  was  quite  a  disposition  among  the  men  to 
assert  that  not  only  'one  church'  but  'one  religion'  is  as 
good  as  another." 

"With  regard  to  the  attitude  of  the  men  toward  denom- 
inationalism  one  can  hardly  say  that  they  are  impatient 
with  denominations  simply  because  they  do  not  reflect 
about  them.  It  is  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  they  ignore 
denominational  lines.  They  simply  do  not  care  to  what 
church  a  minister  or  a  chaplain  belongs." 

More  significant  than  the  attitude  of  the  "unchurched 
majority"  is  the  way  in  which  the  members  of  the  various 
Protestant  bodies  ignored  denominational  lines  under 
army  conditions.  In  the  main  they  showed  little  interest 
in  the  affiliation  of  the  chaplain  and  rarely  expressed  any 
desire  for  distinctively  denominational  ministrations  or 
services.  The  exceptions  were  mostly  in  the  case  of  the 
liturgical  or  sacramental  churches,  such  as  the  Lutheran 
and  Episcopalian. 

"There  seemed  to  be  little  differentiation  among  mem- 
bers of  Protestant  denominations  with  the  possible  excep- 
tion of  Episcopalians."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

"Men  apart  from  the  Roman  Church  and  the  Lutheran 
have  practically  no  interest  in  denominational  difference." 

"At  least  under  war  conditions  there  was  no  Protestant 
denominational  feeling  or  desire  for  special  denomina- 
tional services." 

"The  church  distinctions  were  almost  wholly  disre- 
garded. I  don't  remember  a  dozen  occasions  in  nearly  a 
year's  experience  when  I  was  asked  to  what  church  I 
belonged,  and  it  seldom  occurred  to  me  to  make  that 

inquiry  unless  I  had  particular  reason  to  do  so  

If  I  did  not  represent  the  particular  body  to  which  they 


^  Chaplain  Ross  Miller,  in  Lutheran  Church  Work  and  Review. 


THE  MEN  AND  THE  CHURCH 


31 


belonged  I  did  represent  the  ministry  of  the  church  and 
that  seemed  to  be  sufficient." 

"They  wanted  their  own  church  providing  it  empha- 
sized the  sacramental  life,  otherwise  they  didn't  care 
what  church  they  attended.  Roman  Catholics,  Episco- 
palians, Lutherans,  and  Christians  looked  for  the  Holy 
Communion  weekly  and  expected  it." 

"Twice  I  heard  at  Camp  Upton  of  'camp  pastors'  who 
tried  to  hold  a  denominational  meeting — once  for  com- 
munion and  once  for  a  social  evening.  In  both  cases  the 
response  was  pitifully  small.  Dr.  Manning  did  have  a 
regular  early  communion  service,  but  the  denominational 
note  was  not  stressed,  and  everyone  was  invited,  no  ques- 
tions asked.   I  used  to  go  myself  when  I  could." 

"Careful  analysis  showed  that  only  about  10  per  cent 
of  the  Protestants  in  camp,  with  nothing  else  to  do,  care 
enough  for  their  own  church  to  attend  its  services  on 
Sunday  morning.  Anywhere  from  25  to  30  per  cent  of 
the  Protestants  attended  the  undenominational  services. 
Even  in  the  sacraments  and  prayer  the  men  showed 
absolute  disregard  for  denominational  lines. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  general  attitude  of  Protestants 
as  to  the  vaHdity  of  the  sacraments  as  administered  by 
the  several  denominations  is  much  like  that  of  the  public 
towards  the  marriage  and  burial  services.  "The  un- 
churched public  at  present  is  inclined  to  regard  it  as  one 
of  its  prerogatives  to  claim  the  functions  of  priest  or 
clergyman  in  celebrating  a  wedding  or  a  death."  And 
though  individuals  may  have  some  preference,  the  public 
is  "not  too  particular  whether  its  knot  is  tied  by  Presby- 
terian or  Episcopalian."^* 

Just  as  in  the  case  of  many  people  in  civil  life  the  men 
were  very  largely  influenced  by  the  personality  of  the 
individual  chaplain  in  their  choice  of  ministrations  or  con- 
tentment with  those  they  had.  A  striking  example  of 
this  is  described  by  an  overseas  chaplain : 

"One  day  word  came  from  headquarters  that  each  man 
should  make  out  a  card  denoting  his  religious  persuasion. 
I  knew  that  most  of  the  men  were  Protestants ;  so  when 

"Edwin  A.  McAlpin,  Jr.,  in  The  Continent. 

*  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 

/V 


32     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


I  looked  over  the  returning  cards  and  saw  three  Jews 
and  but  three  Protestants  registered,  and  all  the  rest 
Roman  Catholics,  I  was  amazed.  Calling  a  sergeant  to 
me  I  remonstrated  with  him.  'Now  you  know  this  is  not 
right,'  I  said.  'You  know  these  men  are  Protestants.' 
Then  the  sergeant  smiled  and  explained  that  all  the  boys 
had  gotten  together  and  decided  to  be  'Roman  Catholics' 
for  the  duration  of  the  war.  'They  were  afraid,'  said  the 
sergeant,  'that  if  they  all  registered  as  Protestants,  Head- 
quarters would  decide  there  weren't  enough  Catholics  to 
keep  you  and  the  men  would  lose  their  chaplain !'  " 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MAJORITY 

Having  said  that  only  a  small  proportion  of  men  are 
definitely  Christian  and  that  there  is  a  widespread 
ignorance  as  to  the  truths  of  Christianity,  it  is  important 
to  go  on  to  say  that  there  is  faith  among  the  majority. 
Only  a  small  minority  are  consciously  atheistic.  The  rest 
have  some  religious  ideas.  They  may  be  vague,  sub- 
merged, far  removed  from  a  developed  Christianity. 
They  may  be  definitely  unchristian.  But  they  are  there. 
It  is  well  to  remind  ourselves  that  even  in  a  Christian 
country  religion  and  Christianity  are  not  synonymous. 

To  generalize  on  the  faith  of  the  majority  is  admittedly 
hazardous.  Statistics  are  not  available  and  would  be  of 
little  value  if  they  were.  Nor  have  we  any  considerable 
body  of  clearly  expressed  judgment  on  the  part  of  chap- 
lains. But  from  our  own  experience  and  contact  with 
chaplains  we  believe  the  following  to  be  descriptive  of  the 
religious  condition  of  the  large  number  of  men — many  of 
them  nominally  Christian,  many  of  them  half  in  the 
Church,  a  few  of  them  antagonistic  to  the  Church — who 
constituted  the  majority  in  the  American  army. 

First  of  all,  they  tended  to  think  that  religion  is 
primarily  a  matter  of  deeds  rather  than  of  belief,  that 
belief  does  not  matter  much.  "The  feeling  is  quite 
prevalent  that  conduct  is  all.  Belief,  sacramental  life, 
worship,  etc.,  tend  to  enter  as  substitutes  for  conduct." 
Very  many  would  certainly  agree  with  Donald  Hankey 
that  "Christianity  is  a  way  of  life,  not  an  explanation  of 
life."  And  in  line  with  this  tendency  they  were  inclined 
to  minimize  the  whole  place  and  function  of  worship, 
man's  communion  with  unseen  realities,  the  relationship 


34     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


with  God.  If  religion  is  to  them  largely  a  matter  of 
deeds  it  is  also  largely  a  matter  of  man's  relation  with 
man.  The  average  soldier  would  see  point  in  "Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor."  He  easily  overlooks  "Thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  Thy  God"  as  the  first  commandment  of 
Christianity,  or  merges  it  into  love  of  neighbor. 

"A  soldier  student,  when  asked  what  should  be  the 
task  of  the  preacher  when  the  war  was  over,  said  that 
he  must  become  untheological,  turn  right-about-face  and 
preach  humanity." 

"Their  understanding  of  religion  is  largely  humani- 
tarian. They  find  it  difficult  to  see  that  righteousness 
involves  relationship  to  God  as  well  as  a  duty  to  man." 

"I  call  a  religion  a  bum  religion  that  only  asks  you  to 
worship  God  without  getting  down  to  more  practical 
matters." 

"Their  religious  faith,  as  I  understand  it,  is  very 
largely  summed  up  in  ethical  precepts.  Religion  and 
righteousness  are  synonymous." 

"His  convictions  are  few  and  largely  ethical." 

"I  found  a  general  belief  that  theology  was  unim- 
portant and  had  no  relation  to  life." 

There  was  almost  unanimously  an  idea  of  God  but  it 
probably  did  not  play  a  large  part  in  the  ordinary  con- 
sciousness of  the  average  man  as  he  entered  the  army.  If 
Donald  Hankey  is  right  in  saying,  "ReHgion  means  being 
aware  of  God  as  a  factor  in  one's  environment,"  the 
majority  of  men  before  the  war  were  not  very  religious. 
God  was  not  a  very  large  conscious  factor  in  their  en- 
vironment. The  thought  of  Him  did  not  affect  their 
plans  very  frequently.  Few  of  them  had  any  habitual 
practice  of  recollecting  His  being  or  will.  But  the  idea 
was  certainly  there  with  the  great  body  of  men.  "There 
is  a  universal  belief  in  God."  That  is  a  common  report. 
"Most  of  them  have  an  admiration  for  Jesus  Christ  and 
a  hazy  belief  in  a  Supreme  Ruler  of  the  universe,  but  this 
does  not  lead  them  definitely  to  undertake  a  Christian 
program  for  their  own  lives. 


»i  Chaplain  A.  O.  Brown,  in  The  Christian  Advocate. 


THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MAJORITY  35 


The  idea  of  God  was  generally  vague.  Most  of  us 
would  have  to  answer  to  that  charge.  It  was  mainly  a 
dim  faith  in  Providence,  in  a  good  purpose  behind  life,  in 
a  friendly  "control."  "They  believed  in  Him  as  the 
Supreme  Being,  as  the  Ruler  of  the  Universe — but  their 
faith,  in  most  cases,  did  not  seem  to  go  far  enough — it 
was  not  personal  enough.  There  was  that  belief  and  that 
faith  but  it  seemed  to  be  far  distant — His  hand  was  the 
guiding  hand  of  Destiny  but  He  was  not  the  controlling 
and  guiding  One  in  the  everyday  aflFairs  of  life." 

Of  God  as  a  present  or  future  Judge  of  their  personal 
lives  most  men  had  little  consciousness.  But  probably 
"most  men  believed  that  God  was  on  the  side  of  right 
and  were  confident  that  in  the  end.  Right,  Liberty,  and 
Justice  would  prevail  over  Despotism  and  Injustice."  In 
the  case  of  the  few  who  had  a  more  definite  religious 
consciousness  there  was  often  the  feeling  that  in  waging 
this  war  they  were  doing  what  God  would  approve  and 
were  fighting  on  His  side. 

A  vague  belief  in  immortality  was  also  general  among 
men  as  they  came  out  of  civilian  life  into  the  army. 
Whether  or  not  their  belief  can  be  called  "Christian"  is  a 
debatable  point.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  how 
largely  it  is  Christian  in  origin,  how  largely  it  is  closely 
associated  with  the  Resurrection.^^  We  do  not  know.  It 
is  for  the  most  part  an  undefined  faith  that  death  is  not 
the  end,  that  there  is  more  life  ahead.  "Most  of  them 
take  it  for  granted,  apparently,  that  death  is  simply  a 
transition,  important  perhaps,  but  not  terrible,  and  that 
they  are  to  live  on,  elsewhere."^*  "Don't  remember 
meeting  a  man  (100,000  passed  through  this  camp)  who 
did  not  believe  in  the  continuity  of  life."  Miss  Kirkland 
believes  that  "this  assurance  takes  almost  no  color  from 

"  In  this  connection  Dr.  Kelman's  judgment  as  to  the  attitude  of  the 
average  man  towards  the  Resurrection  is  interesting.  "It  would  be  difficult 
to  name  a  doctrine  which,  in  the  theological  statement  of  it,  had  less  interest 
or  even  less  meaning  for  soldiers.  The  stories  of  the  resurrection  of  our 
Lord  are  very  beautiful,  but  they  are  out  of  the  sphere  of  the  ordinary 
man's  experience."     ("The  War  and  Preaching.") 

»W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 


36      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


previous  education,  Catholic,  Protestant,  or  agnostic." 
At  any  rate,  it  appears  to  have  Httle  of  moral  judgment 
involved  in  it,  as  conditioning  the  fact  or  the  character 
of  the  future  life.  "Of  course  immortality  and  universal 
salvation  must  be  distinguished.  Most  of  the  men  be- 
lieved in  both,  but  I  have  not  yet  found  any  man  who  did 
not  believe  in  the  first  at  least." 

These  beliefs  in  God  and  immortality  were  for  most 
men  ideas  "in  reserve."  They  were  not  motives  so  much 
as  "comforts."  They  were  not  controlling  beliefs  in  the 
sense  of  being  frequently  thought  and  frequently  brought 
to  bear  on  men's  decisions  and  actions.  Rather  they  were 
comforting  thoughts  upon  which  men  fell  back  in  times 
of  stress.  In  this  sense  they  were  widely  distributed. 
In  this  sense  the  majority  of  men  as  we  came  to  know 
them  in  the  army  were  religious. 

Concerning  the  men's  idea  of  Christ  it  is  difficult  to 
speak  with  any  confidence.  One  of  the  most  striking 
characteristics  of  the  testimony  received  from  chaplains 
and  others  in  the  preparation  of  this  report  is  the  meager- 
ness  of  evidence  on  this  point,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
one  of  the  questions  asked  in  a  questionnaire  to  which  a 
considerable  number  of  replies  was  received  was,  "What 
do  the  men  think  about  Jesus  Christ?"  Perhaps  this 
lack  of  evidence  is  in  itself  evidence  of  a  significant  kind. 
It  would  seem  to  imply  that  there  was  not  sufficient 
definiteness  or  clarity  in  the  men's  minds  on  the  subject 
to  make  it  possible  even  for  close  observers  to  attempt 
any  generalization. 

From  the  few  testimonies  that  have  come  to  us  it 
would  appear  that  when  men  think  of  Christ  it  is  with 
a  general  feeling  of  great  respect  and  admiration : 

"Most  of  them  have  an  admiration  for  Jesus  Christ." 

"The  universal  testimony  of  chaplains  and  welfare 
workers  with  whom  I  have  talked  regarding  the  soldier's 
attitude  toward  Jesus  Christ  is  that  this  attitude  was 
always  one  of  respect.   The  use  of  Christ's  name  in  pro- 


THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MAJORITY 


37 


fanity  was  often  unconscious.  It  was  always  employed 
to  emphasize  contentions,  an  unconscious  tribute  to  the 
greatness  of  Jesus.  No  man  ever  swore  at  Jesus;  His 
name  was  brought  in  to  help  focus  attention.  On  the 
wall  of  nearly  every  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hut  was  some  represen- 
tation of  Jesus  and  very  few  men  passed  by  it  without  at 
some  time  pausing  and  gazing  upon  it  with  moral  earnest- 
ness. The  application  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  to  political 
or  social  problems  in  secular  address  invariably  received 
the  most  respectful  attention,  and  unless  obviously  dis- 
torted seemed  to  be  accepted  as  final."  (A  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
secretary  of  large  experience.)" 

This  testimony  would  be  corroborated  in  a  general  way 
by  great  numbers  of  ministers  in  the  camps  who  found 
that  whenever  they  spoke  to  the  men  of  the  character  of 
Christ,  or  of  Christ  as  their  Comrade,  there  was  a  most 
unmistakable  response.  But  many  feel  that  those  who 
customarily  think  of  Christ  at  all  are  very  few. 

"Christ  occupied  small  place  in  their  thoughts." 

"Those  who  think  of  Him  at  all  consider  Him  an  ideal 
kind  of  man.  This  number  is  very  small.  The  rest  do 
not  think  of  Christ." 

Probably  it  would  be  fair  to  say,  although  our  evi- 
dence here  is  more  meager  than  elsewhere,  that  so  far 
as  men  thought  of  Christ  it  was  with  feelings  of  admira- 
tion but  that  their  respect  rested  on  rather  vague  impres- 


"  Cf.  the  conclusion  of  the  British  committee  which  was  convened  by  Dr. 
D.  S.  Cairns  and  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  and  which  has  prepared  the 
report  entitled,  "The  Army  and  Religion": 

"There  is  practically  universal  respect  and  even  reverence  for  Jesus 
Christ.  This  is  quite  plainly  seen  whenever  the  men  disclose  their  real 
thoughts  about  Him,  though  it  is  often  superficially  disguised  by  the  pro- 
fane use  of  His  name  He  is  recognized  by  all  the  serious  thinking 

men  as  the  best  of  the  race,  though  there  is  this  very  frequent  qualification, 
which  seems  inconsistent,  that  the  heroic  side  of  His  character  is  largely 
unknown,  and  it  is  clear  that,  even  as  a  man,  the  outlines  of  His  figure  are 
very  dim.  We  are  told  also  that  they  do  not  seem  to  think  much  about 
Him.  It  is  only  when  they  do  think  that  this  reverence  appears.  They 
distinguish  Him  quite  clearly  from  the  Churches,  which,  as  we  shall  see  in 
a  later  chapter,  they  criticize  without  stint.  But  the  whole  deeper  side  of  the 
Church's  teaching  about  Jesus  Christ  seems  to  have  little  or  no  hold  upon 
them,  except  of  the  loosest  kind.  Of  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God,  and  as  the 
Atoning  Sacrifice  for  the  world,  they  have  little  or  no  knowledge  at  all. 
Even  more  significant,  perhaps,  is  it  that  our  question  as  to  whether  the 
men  knew  of  the  Living  Christ,  that  is  to  say,  the  Christ  whose  presence 
and  power  are  realized  by  His  servants,  met  with  a  negative  that  was 
practically  universal,  and  that  in  many  cases,  when  this  Gospel  was  preached 
to  them,  it  came  as  a  startling  novelty  and  attracted  immediate  attention." 


38     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


sions  more  than  on  any  definite  knowledge  of  His  life 
or  clear  understanding  of  His  teachings. 

"Most  men  still  carry  over  from  Sunday-school  days 
a  general  idea  that  'Christ  was  the  best  man  that  ever 
lived,'  but  they  could  tell  you  exceedingly  little  about  His 
life  or  character.  They  would  vaguely  say  that  He  was 
v  good  and  kind  and  unselfish.  To  great  numbers  He  was 
hardly  more  than  the  sorrowful  figure  that  they  had  seen 
in  stained-glass  windows,  or  a  dim  figure  of  the  past  far 
removed  from  their  own  present  interests  and  needs." 

With  life's  fundamental  alternatives,  with  the  ques- 
tion of  final  destiny,  with  what  is  usually  meant  by  salva- 
tion, most  men  were  little  preoccupied.^^  The  anxious 
soul  was  comparatively  rare.  What  William  James  called 
healthy-minded  religion  was  dominant.  "Very  few  men 
seemed  to  have  any  feeling  akin  to  repentance  further 
than  a  vague  acknowledgment  that  they  had  been  foolish. 
However  they  may  regard  sin  it  is  not  to  them  a  cause 
of  fear  or  sorrow.*^ 

It  is  worth  while  to  remind  ourselves  that  if  religious 
faith  was  bewilderingly  inarticulate,  to  such  an  extent 
as  to  tempt  one  to  deny  its  existence,  the  same  was  true 
of  men's  idealism  in  regard  to  the  war.    That  too  was 


°*  Cf.  the  following:  "An  overwhelming  amount  of  evidence  from  many 
sources  shows  that  there  is  today  little  or  no  conscious  sense  of  sin.  There 
is  a  latent  sense  of  something  wrong,  but  of  sin  as  guilt  there  is  very  often 
no  sense  at  all,  and  little  conscious  need  of  a  Saviour.  That  this  is  to  some 
extent  due  to  defective  presentation  and  consequent  misunderstanding  of  the 
meaning  of  salvation  is  undoubted,  but  it  may  also  be  due  to  the  lack  of  a 
positive  ideal  which  can  through  very  contrast  produce  the  sense  of  sin. 
Ideas  which  dominate  the  national  life  always  affect  the  thoughts  and  ideals 
of  the  individual,  and  the  failure  of  the  Church  to  impress  the  nation  with 
its  own  thought  of  God  probably  accounts  in  part  for  the  inadequate  sense 
of  sin. 

"Superficial  ideas  about  evolution,  with  a  notion  that  everything  is  coming 
right  in  the  end,  a  shallow  fatalism,  and  easy  going  ideas  about  judgment 
and  the  character  of  God  do  not  tend  to  make  a  man  say,  'What  shall  I  do 
to  be  saved?'  It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  while,  as  ever,  repentance  and 
remission  of  sins  must  be  preached  in  Christ's  name,  we  must  at  the  same 
time  remember  that  the  fear  and  horror  of  judgment  and  the  horror  of  sin, 
which  has  been  in  all  ages  such  a  powerful  incentive  to  repentance,  is  today 
perhaps  weaker  than  ever  before.  The  profound  difficulty  of  finding  a 
motive  for  repentance  and  amendment  that  will  appeal  to  our  generation 
lies  at  the  root  of  much  of  our  ineffective  evangelism."  (Report  of  the 
Archbishops'  Third  Committee  of  Inquiry.) 

The  following  comment,  however,  from  one  who  read  the  galley  proof 
of  this  report  is  worth  noting:  "This  depends  on  the  appeal  that  was  made. 
A  number  of  ministers  have  told  me  that  they  had  never  seen  the  purely 
evangelistic  appeal  responded  to  so  readily  as  among  the  soldiers.  My  ex- 
perience is  rather  with  your  opinion,  though  I  have  not  made  the  other 
appeal." 


THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MAJORITY  39 


vague,  obscure,  shy,  fluctuating.  It  sometimes  seemed 
as  though  there  was  nothing  but  a  boyish  football  spirit, 
or  a  blind  following  of  national  mob  impulse  in  the 
motives  that  carried  men  into  the  war.  The  response 
to  the  more  conscious  and  ideal  motives  which  were  so 
prominent  in  American  official  utterance  was  hidden 
far  down  in  the  soldier's  nature. 


CHAPTER  IV 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  OF  THE 
MAJORITY 

When  we  turn  from  religious  ideas  or  beliefs  to  moral 
standards  and  moral  life  we  begin  to  penetrate  further 
into  what  has  been  called  "the  religion  of  the  inarticu- 
late." Donald  Hankey,  who  gave  this  phrase  its  cur- 
rency, insisted  that  "it  did  not  necessarily  follow  that 
because  a  man  was  inarticulate  he  therefore  had  no 
religion.  Action  and  objects  of  admiration,  these  [are] 
the  things  that  we  must  watch  if  we  would  discover  the 
true  religion  of  the  inarticulate."  Many  have  found  in 
the  standards  and  life  of  men  an  encouragement  which 
more  than  compensated  for  the  slight  hold  which  organ- 
ized and  explicit  religion  appears  to  have. 

What  were  the  virtues  men  admired  and  practiced? 
What  were  the  vices  they  hated  ?  What  were  their  weak- 
nesses ? 

Some  caution  needs  to  be  observed  in  judging  the 
character  of  the  average  man  by  the  qualities  he  showed 
in  the  army.  The  life  was  abnormal  in  many  ways ;  men 
were  separated  from  some  of  the  normal  social  restraints 
and  stimuli  and  given  a  new  set  of  restraints  and  stimuli. 
The  army  was  a  male  community.  It  was  "monastic 
without  the  religious  impulse  of  monasticism."^^  And 
women  are  pace  setters  in  our  present  social  system. 
The  army  was  a  cooperative,  a  communistic  community, 
where  property  rights  were  slight  and  where  mutual 
dependence  was  perfectly  clear.  Public  opinion  had  the 
same  exceptional  power  over  the  individual  that  it  has 
in  other  highly  unified  communities  such  as  a  school  or 

MacLean  and  Sclater,  "God  and  the  Soldier." 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE 


41 


college.  The  discipline  and  tradition  of  the  army  exalted 
certain  virtues.  Certain  virtues  were  expected  of  every 
man — courage,  for  instance.  And  all  the  force  of  train- 
ing, popular  opinion,  and  police  power  pointed  in  that 
direction.  A  very  strong  character,  a  man  whose  stan- 
dards and  habits  were  thoroughly  established  and  inde- 
pendent, would,  of  course,  show  himself  unchanged.  But 
the  average  man  whose  character  is  fluid  and  very  respon- 
sive to  his  environment  may  be  quite  different  in  the  army 
and  out  of  it.  It  is  not  safe  to  expect  the  virtues  he 
showed  in  war  to  be  carried  over  into  peace.  Nor  is  it 
likely  that  some  of  the  vices  will  be  carried  over  either. 

"A  man's  mental  self  cannot  be  separated  from  his 
daily  habits,  from  the  environment  he  lives  in,  from  the 
kind  of  difficulties  he  is  coping  with,  from  the  plans, 
inhibitions,  and  ideas  he  is  occupied  with.  In  all  these 
ways  the  mind  of  the  soldier  is  marked  off  from  the  mind 
of  the  same  man  in  civil  life.  Soldiering  is  a  life  having 
its  own  special  strains  and  its  own  standards.  It  not  only 
brings  different  muscles  into  action;  it  tests  character  in 
new  places."^^ 

Illustration  of  the  effect  of  the  unusual  environment 
may  be  seen  in  the  way  that  men  varied  according  to 
circumstances,  and  in  the  striking  contradictions  in 
character  produced. 

"You  can't  imagine  how  great  a  difference  there  is 
between  an  army  at  war  and  an  army  at  peace.  In  time 
of  war  it  is  inspiring  to  be  in  an  army.  AH  petty  causes 
and  purposes  are  fairly  burned  up  in  the  intensity  of  the 
great  common  aim.  Men  lose  their  selfishness,  their 
greedy  ambition,  and  all  the  unlovable  part  of  their 
nature  when  in  the  heat  of  the  fight.  The  degree  of  this 
change  varies  exactly  with  the  distance  from  the  actual 
front  lines  and  with  the  degree  of  active  service  in  which 
the  man  is  engaged.  The  nearest  thing  you  will  ever  see 
on  this  earth  to  a  bunch  of  saints  and  angels  is  a  bunch 
of  infantry  going  through  a  bad  barrage.  I  have  seen  my 
own  bunch  of  roughneck  truck  drivers  in  a  tight  place 
and  know  how  we  felt  towards  each  other.    I  recall  one 


•»  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


42      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


occasion  when  we  got  in  a  traffic  jam  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  while  loaded  with  artillery  ammunition.  Those 
boys  sat  on  those  trucks  loaded  with  enough  high  explo- 
sives to  blow  them  into  shreds  and  calmly  pulled  each 
other  out  of  mud  holes  while  the  Germans  shelled  the 
road  steadily.  They  cursed  each  other  lustily  the  whole 
time,  but  never  a  grumble  or  a  refusal  to  do  anything 
necessary  to  clear  the  ground.  I  remember  that  at  that 
moment  I  loved  every  one  of  them  like  a  brother  and  I 
think  they  all  felt  the  same  way  about  it.  The  worst  old 
pickpocket  in  the  bunch  seemed  like  the  most  lovable 
man  I  had  ever  met.  The  infantry  went  through  that 
same  experience  in  an  intensified  degree  and  for  greater 
lengths  of  time.  I  am  convinced,  however,  that  this  was 
felt  very  little  outside  of  the  actual  danger  zone  and  that 
it  was  not  felt  at  all  in  the  camps  in  the  U.  S."  (Soldier's 
letter.) 

In  "Papers  from  Picardy"  T.  W.  Pym  gives  a  very 
illuminating  case  which  might  readily  have  occurred  in 
any  army. 

"A  friend  of  mine  had  his  blanket  taken ;  so  he  watched 
his  opportunity  and  took  another  man's.  The  weather 
was  bitterly  cold.  He  was  not  the  least  ashamed  of  his 
action,  nor  was  he  sorry  for  the  man  he  had  robbed  even 
when  he  found  that  the  loser  was  sufficiently  scrupulous 
or  clumsy  not  to  replace  his  loss  in  a  similar  fashion.  He 
would  never  have  stolen  the  man's  money,  yet  he  could 
see  no  inconsistency  in  taking  what  was  at  the  time 
worth  much  more  to  either  of  them  than  a  fistful  of  five- 
franc  notes.  Later  he  risked  his  life  in  a  gallant  attempt 
to  save  the  man  he  had  previously  despoiled — not,  I  feel 
sure,  in  any  spirit  of  remorse — but  for  the  simple  fact 
that  whereas  it  would  be  unreasonable  to  suffer  cold  and 
discomfort  instead  of  another  man,  it  was  perfectly  rea- 
sonable and  indeed  necessary  to  risk  wounds  and  death 
itself  in  order  to  save  the  same  man's  life.  The  fine 
courage  of  the  last  act  was  in  accordance  with  the  disci- 
pline and  training  and  the  traditions  of  the  British  army, 
the  theft  of  a  blanket  was  outside  the  scope  of  discipline; 
it  came  under  the  influence  of  no  tradition,  save  the  oldest 
in  the  world's  history — getting's  keeping." 

The  fact  is  that  in  the  army  the  same  men  might  be  at 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  43 


different  times  either  Good  Samaritans  or  thieves.  Men 
who  were  shiftless,  unwilling  to  share  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  community's  life,  showed  themselves  ready 
and  eager  to  die  for  it.**  Men  who  risked  death  and  suf- 
fered pain  for  their  country  will  not  in  the  years  ahead 
always  live  for  it.  In  great  measure  these  contradictions 
were  due  to  the  abnormal  conditions,  in  part  they  are 
but  the  mystery  of 

"These  common  souls  and  human 
Who  laugh  their  sins  abroad 
But  hide  the  love  of  woman 
And  seek  the  fear  of  God." 

In  spite  of  these  cautions  it  probably  remains  true  that 
in  general  the  virtues  admired  and  practiced  in  the  army, 
the  vices  hated  there,  and  the  weaknesses  shown  there, 
are  fairly  characteristic  of  the  average  man  in  civil  life, 

VIRTUES  GENERALLY  ADMIRED  AND 
FREQUENTLY  FOUND 

The  lists  of  virtues  generally  admired  by  men  in  the 
army  and  frequently  found  show  a  great  deal  of  simi- 
larity. General  assent  would  be  given  to  such  an  analysis 
as  the  following: 

"Certain  qualities  are  universally  approved  and  ad- 
mired in  a  soldier  and  they  are  all  positive  qualities. 
He  will  stand  up  and  fight  to  resent  a  personal  insult  or 
to  help  out  a  friend.  He  will  be  there  when  the  battle  is 
on  however  much  he  may  be  A.  W.  O.  L.  in  peace  times. 
He  will  be  generous  with  his  money  and  with  any  other 
good  thing  he  has  in  his  possession.   He  will  be  loyal  to 


"Years  before  this  war  the  penetrating  writer  of  an  'Open  Letter  to 
English  Gentlemen,'  published  in  The  Hibbert  Journal,  maintained  that  it 
was  a  far  harder  thing  to  live  for  one's  community  than  to  die  for  it — 
obviously  so,  as  he  said,  since  so  many  more  were  found  to  do  the  latter 
than  to  do  the  former.  Many  a  man  of  ease  and  independence,  who  in  the 
days  of  peace  could  not  spare  from  his  amusements  the  time  to  acquire 
first-hand  knowledge  of  the  social  conditions  af  the  masses  in  an  attempt 
to  better  them,  has  for  many  months  on  end  denied  himself  both  ease  and 
independence  in  order  to  learn  how  to  fight  and,  fighting — if  necessary — to 
die.  Many  a  man  who  would  not  have  given  up  a  shooting-box  for  one 
year  in  order  to  give  a  hundred  families  on  the  borders  of  destitution  the 
chance  of  a  fresh  start  in  the  colonies,  has  since  laid  down  his  life  in  de- 
fense of  shooting-box  and  slum-dwelling  alike."    T.  W.  Pym. 


44     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


his  mother  and  his  home  and  will  show  it  by  the  letters 
he  writes  and  the  size  of  his  allotment.  He  will  be  modest 
about  his  own  achievements,  will  lie  marvellously  to  save 
a  friend,  but  will  tell  the  straight  of  it  when  being  ques- 
tioned on  his  own  account.  He  will  get  along  with  a 
minimum  of  growling  and  will  respond  when  the  hard 
pull  comes  every  time." 

"One  might  be  almost  content  here  simply  to  urge 
complete  loyalty,  in  the  new  life  at  home,  to  what  has 
come  to  be  thought  the  soldier's  own  fourfold  ideal  of 
courage,  unselfishness,  generosity,  and  modesty,  espe- 
cially when  the  ideal  is  supplemented  by  what  the  editor 
of  The  Stars  and  Stripes  says  might  be  called  the  soldier's 
great  fifth  virtue — cheerful  patience."^' 

F.  B.  Smith  after  considerable  inquiry  among  troops 
in  France  published  an  article  entitled  "Four  Sins  the 
Soldiers  Say  They  Hate,"  in  the  course  of  which  he  sum- 
marized his  conclusions  as  follows : 

"All  these  tests,  among  widely  separated  groups,  pro- 
duced answers  so  nearly  identical  that  it  seems  beyond 
question  that  we  may  take  the  result  as  the  code  of 
morals  which  our  soldiers  have  set  up  for  themselves. 

"Now,  what  is  this  code? 

"First — Courage 

"Second — Unselfishness 

"Third — Generosity 

"Fourth — Modesty  or  Humility 

"These  four  qualities  were  put  at  the  top  by  such  an 
overwhelming  majority  that  there  was  absolutely  no 
question  of  their  place  there.  And  when  we  reversed  the 
process  and  asked  for  the  'meanest  sins,'  the  answers 
checked  up  the  same.  For  the  sins  placed  at  the  head  of 
the  list  were : 

"First — Cowardice 

"Second — Selfishness 

"Third — Stinginess 

"Fourth— Boastfulness."^« 

Henry  Churchill  King,  "For  a  New  America  in  a  New  World." 

The  British  accounts  are  to  the  same  effect.  "Courage,  selflessness, 
and  loyalty — these  are  the  virtues  that  are  being  brought  back  from  the 
bloodstained  fields  by  the  men."     ("God  and  the  Soldier.") 

"Their  cheerfulness,  stubbornness,  patience,  generosity,  humility,  and 
willingness  to  suffer  and  to  die."     ("Thoughts  on  Religion  at  the  Front.") 

"They  certainly  did  believe  in  unselfishness,  generosity,  charity,  and 
humility."    ("A  Student  in  Arms.") 

"  In  the  American  Magazine. 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  45 


The  virtues  that  emerge  from  many  reports  may  be 
summarized  as  follows : 

1.  Courage,  especially  physical  courage — a  carrying 
on  in  spite  of  fear — the  ability  to  go  steadfastly  into 
danger,  pain,  and  death. 

"This  should  be  carefully  widened  to  include  the  virtue 
of  holding  on  even  when  one  is  afraid.  Contrast  must 
not  be  made  between  courage  and  fear,  but  between 
courage  and  failure.  Many  soldiers  have  testified  to  their 
downright  fear  under  fire,  but  have  rejoiced  that  they 
held  on  in  spite  of  it.  They  make  a  good  deal  of  the 
purely  corporate  force  of  this  virtue." 

2.  Unselfishness,  especially  a  consideration  for  others 
when  wounded,  and  readiness  to  take  great  risks  to  save 
a  comrade's  life. 

"We  had  a  sergeant  in  our  company  who  was  shot 

through  the  lung  We  hardly  picked  him  up  when 

he  said  huskily,  'Don't  touch  me,  fellows — look  after 
those  other  boys.   They  are  worse  off  than  I  am.'  " 

"One  of  the  most  impressive  things  a  man  with  a  heart 
of  any  sort  is  bound  to  notice  in  the  war  is  the  universal 
way  in  which  the  wounded  men  try  to  help  one  another. 
This  is  noticeable  everywhere,  in  No  Man's  Land,  in  the 
trenches,  in  a  scrap,  in  the  hospitals  and  dressing  sta- 
tions— everywhere  the  chivalric,  noble,  generous,  Ameri- 
can impulse  to  help  the  other  fellow  first. "^^ 

3.  Generosity,  open-handedness  in  the  sharing  of  small 
luxuries  and  personal  possessions. 

"I  find  few  soldiers  or  workers  who  don't  magnify  this. 
They  point  out  that  the  hoarding  is  unnecessary  when 
more  is  so  easily  had,  and  that  it  is  hardly  decent  to  pre- 
tend personal  necessity  when  the  supply  is  so  readily 
restored.  A  number  of  thoughtful  men  have  commented 
on  the  curious  feeling  they  had  of  an  abundant  supply 
somewhere  which  might  at  any  time  reach  them  covering 
their  possible  need." 

4.  Persistent  cheerfulness,  "a  core  of  impenetrable 
cheerfulness  beneath  a  coat  of  purely  linguistic  grous- 


"  Chaplain  T.  E.  Swann,  in  The  Churchman. 

»  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 


46      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


5.  Straightforwardness,  not  so  much  strict  honesty  as 
squareness  and  hatred  of  sham. 

6.  Humility,  compatible  with  great  boastfulness  as 
regards  the  unit. 

7.  Loyalty,  especially  to  the  unit. 

8.  Devotion  to  home  and  mother. 

"The  word  home  stands  for  another  great  spiritual 
reality  to  the  soldier.  In  trying  hours  his  family  ties  have 
taken  on  a  new  strength  and  been  invested  with  a  new 
preciousness.  Memories  of  home,  the  consciousness  of 
bonds  of  affection  that  link  him  to  members  of  his 
family,  this  sense  of  family  interdependence  with  its 
fears  as  well  as  its  hopes,  mean  more  to  the  average  sol- 
dier than  either  patriotism  or  religion.  To  speak  of  home 
to  the  soldier  is  to  be  assured  of  an  immediate  response. 
Over  and  over  again  I  have  seen  the  eyes  of  soldiers  in 
hospitals  brim  over  and  their  faces  glow  with  smiles  of 
delight  and  pride  when  I  have  spoken  to  them  of  parents, 
wife  and  children.  Family  photographs  are  erected  into 
shrines  of  worship  at  the  bedside  of  the  wounded.  Let- 
ters come  like  answers  to  prayer.  It  is  in  what  his  home 
means  to  him  that  the  soldier  finds  the  chief  sources  of 
the  fountain  at  which  his  spirit  is  renewed."^* 

"I  have  a  feeling  that  the  influence  of  the  home  upon 
the  soldier  has  not  been  sufficiently  stressed.  It  was  his 
sheet  anchor,  and  the  powerful  magnet  which  irresistibly 
drew  him  back  to  his  native  land.  It  would  be  safe  to 
say  that  as  an  influence  it  affected  the  life  and  purpose  of 
the  average  soldier  more  than  the  Church.  In  the  home 
the  mother  was  the  central  figure." 

"The  qualities  generally  hated  indicate  the  same  stan- 
dard: Cowardice,  closefistedness,  snobbishness,  swell- 
headedness,  hypocrisy,  disloyalty,  meanness." 

The  chaplains  would  not  claim  that  all  men  had  these 
qualities  or  that  men  carried  them  out  in  all  their  impli- 
cations. What  they  do  claim  is  that  these  are  virtues 
which  the  average  American  man  admires  in  others.*** 

'°  Chaplain  J.  S.  Dancey,  in  The  Northwestern  Christian  Advocate. 

*"  "Somewhere  in  the  list  ought  to  be  put  a  virtue  which  soldiers  espe- 
cially praise  in  their  officers  and  try  to  copy  in  themselves,  namely,  getting 
things  done,  no  matter  how.  It  is  of  the  nature  of  persistency,  of  single- 
mindedness." 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  47 


They  constitute  his  moral  ideal.  And  average  men  in 
great  numbers,  met  by  the  demands  of  army  life  and  war, 
showed  that  they  had  the  elements  of  these  virtues  in 
their  own  make-up.  The  war  did  not  produce  these 
virtues — it  simply  revealed  them  to  us  as  never  before. 

Any  attempt  to  account  for  these  virtues  decisively  is 
rather  futile.  To  call  them  "Christian"  may  readily  mis- 
lead. All  would  probably  agree  that  though  "there  is 
little  conscious  and  articulate  Christianity  at  the  front, 
yet  there  are  profoundly  Christian  characteristics  in 
what  men  are  and  do  and  endure,  who  have  never  known 
or  do  not  understand  or  have  forgotten  the  Christian 
religion."*^  These  are  virtues  which  Christ  approved 
and  exalted  and  lived.  If  men  do  not  know  that  these 
are  Christian  virtues  it  is  a  tragedy,  and  a  'judgment' 
upon  us  in  the  Church.  "But  from  a  generalization 
which  is  concerned  with  the  basis  of  the  character  of 
the  majority,  conscious  Christianity  must,  however  re- 
gretfully, be  left  almost  entirely  out  of  account."*^ 
Some  will  see  in  that  character  the  influence  of  Christian 
homes,  and  of  a  consciously  Christian  environment. 
Others  will  explain  it  as  the  product  of  military  training. 
Still  others  will  see  in  it  an  expression  of  that  "Light 
which  lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the  world."  To 
disentangle  the  strands  of  Christian  influence,  military 
training,  and  original  human  nature  is  an  impossible  task. 
The  important  fact  for  the  Church  is  that  under  the 
conditions  of  war  men  showed  the  elements  of  great 
Christian  virtues,  though  not  motivated  by  any  conscious 
allegiance  to  Christ.*^ 

*^  N.  S.  Talbot,  "Thoughts  on  Religion  at  the  Front." 
G.  Gordon,  "Papers  from  Picardy." 

"  "We  may  dare  to  say  that  we  have  been  allowed  to  see  the  radiant  out- 
shining of  that  'Light  which  lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the  world'  in 
the  almost  universal  unselfishness.,  the  ready  eagerness  to  sacrifice  self,  the 
amazing  spirit  of  cheerful  endurance  of  hardship  under  every  conceivable 
circumstance  of  trial  which  has  characterized  tne  bearing  of  men  of  all 
ranks  in  the  Army  and  Navy.  The  quality  of  the  material  is  indeed  mag- 
nificent beyond  words.  Still  it  remams  true  that  of  religion  as  a  life  of 
conscious  union  with  God  they  know  little  or  nothing."  (Report  on  Chap- 
lains' Replies  to  Lord  Bishop  of  Kensington.) 

"There  are  in  them  excellences  and  simple  heroisms  which  make  it  plain 
that  Christianity  is  no  artificial  thing  superimposed  on  human  nature,  but  is 
the  laying  bare  and  setting  free  of  its  inmost  native  quality."  Neville  S. 
Talbot. 


48     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


VICES  OR  MORAL  WEAKNESSES  FREQUENTLY 
FOUND  AND  LARGELY  CONDONED 

The  same  caution  that  needs  to  be  observed  in  judging 
the  moral  virtues  of  the  average  man  in  civil  life  by  the 
character  he  showed  in  war  must  be  applied  to  his  vices 
and  moral  weaknesses.  The  form  and  extent  they 
assumed  in  the  army  were  often  the  result  of  abnormal 
conditions.  A  discussion  of  the  effect  of  the  war  and 
military  training  on  moral  standards  and  Hfe  will  be 
found  in  Section  II  of  this  report.  This  section  is  con- 
cerned not  with  the  effect  of  the  war  but  with  what 
contact  with  the  army  revealed  concerning  the  moral 
weaknesses  of  an  average  group  of  American  men. 

As  to  the  vices  and  moral  weaknesses  found  in  the 
army  there  is  very  general  agreement.  The  differences  of 
opinion  are  as  to  the  actual  extent  and  seriousness  of 
certain  of  them.  The  following  reports  are  typical : 

"The  obvious  weaknesses  are  foul  talk,  swearing, 
gambling,  drinking,  and  immorality.  Fundamentally 
their  weaknesses  are  those  that  come  from  immature 
character.  They  still  impulsively  respond  to  immediate 
environment.  They  don't  dominate  or  control.  The 
present  bulks  large  and  often  makes  them  forget  those 
distant  things  which  down  in  their  hearts  they  know  are 
best." 

"The  sins  which  a  soldier  spurns  are  not  wine,  women, 
cards,  and  cursing." 

"We've  been  criticized  as  an  army  as  being  smokers, 
swearers,  and  gamblers.  There  is  truth  in  it.  Nearly  all 
our  men  did  all  of  these  things." 

"As  regards  the  general  moral  tone  of  the  officers  and 
men  of  the  A.  E.  F. — much  profanity  and  an  interesting 
frankness  in  regard  to  sex  cohabitation." 

"I  have  found  that  the  moral  standards  of  the  strong- 
minded,  capable  old  army  non-commissioned  officer  are 
the  standards  that  tend  more  and  more  to  prevail.  The 
old  sergeant  has  very  liberal  and  tolerant  views  on 
drinking,  gambling,  profanity,  vulgarity  in  speech,  non- 
church  attendance,  association  with  prostitutes,  and  so 
on.    If  he  does  condemn  any  of  these  practices  he  con- 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  49 


demns  them  on  the  ground  that  they  are  fooHsh,  not  that 
they  are  wrong." 

"We've  had  six  Y.  M.  C.  A.  preachers  here  in  the  last 
two  weeks,"  one  of  the  men  said  to  me.  "They've  been 
joy-riding  up  and  down  the  lines,  preaching  to  us  about 
the  dangers  of  booze,  women,  and  gambling.  And  it's  the 
holy  truth,  Judge,  we're  so  sore  that  every  one  of  us  is 
feeling  like  having  a  hell  of  a  time  with  all  three  the  first 
leave  we  get."** 

"They  have  very  lax  ideas  about  drunkenness  and 
sexual  irregularity,  but  they  have  very  strict  ideas  about 
the  sacredness  of  social  obligations  within  the  groups  to 
which  they  belong.  I  would  mention  sheer  fear  of  public 
opinion  as  one  of  the  great  weaknesses  of  the  men.  They 
would  rather  be  in  fashion  than  be  right."*" 

"They  believe  that  morality  is  all  right  for  those  who 
can  or  care  to  live  up  to  it,  most  of  them  feel  that  they 
can't  and  that  it  would  spoil  the  fun  of  life  if  they  could. 
They  believe  in  being  square,  in  telling  the  truth,  and  not 
cheating  when  they  gamble ;  on  the  other  hand,  they 
believe  in  'Good  Business,'  the  essence  of  which  as  far  as 
I  can  make  out  is  not  getting  caught.  They  seem  to  have 
little  conception  of  social  justice  or  of  morality  in  its 
larger  sense.  They  have  never  heard  of  the  British  Labor 
Party's  proposals.  Social  arrangements  should  be  such 
that  business  will  be  prosperous." 

In  summary  it  may  be  said  that  impurity,  obscene 
and  profane  language,  and  gambling  appear  in  practically 
all  reports.  Petty  stealing  is  frequently  mentioned. 
Drunkenness,  lack  of  moral  courage,  "looking  out  for 
number  one,"  lack  of  social  morality  in  the  large  sense, 
are  occasionally  set  down. 

Sexual  Immorality.  There  are  two  groups  of  statistics 
to  which  one  naturally  turns  for  an  index  of  the  prev- 
alence of  sexual  immorality — the  venereal  rate  and  the 
prophylaxis  rate.*' 

"  Judge  Ben  Lindsey,  "Doughboy's  Religion,"  Cosmopolitan. 
Sherwood  Eddy,  "VVith  Our  Soldiers  in  France." 

**  An  interesting  non-statistical  estimate  of  the  situation  is  reported  by  a 
member  of  the  Committee.  "One  of  our  men  in  France  throughout  the  war 
in  a  position  which  gave  him  special  opportunity  for  observation,  told  me 
that  he  had  checked  his  own  observations  by  conferences  with  others  and 
estimated  that  20  per  cent  of  our  men  in  the  army  in  France  were  incor- 
ruptible and  20  per  cent  more  were  utterly  corrupt  and  tkat  the  60  per  cent 


50     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


Since  venereal  diseases  are  "communicated  for  the 
most  part  by  illicit  sexual  intercourse  and  chiefly  by  pros- 
titution, their  prevalence  is  a  rough  measure  of  the  failure 
of  education  and  other  social  influences  to  secure  control 
of  the  sex  impulse  on  the  part  of  the  male  popula- 
tion."*^ But  the  venereal  rate  must  be  interpreted 
with  considerable  care.  As  Colonel  Snow  of  the  Medical 
Corps  points  out  in  his  article  on  "Venereal  Disease  Con- 
trol in  the  Army,"  "There  has  been  much  unintentional 
misinterpretation  of  the  venereal  disease  figures  of  the 
army  owing  to  a  failure  to  understand  the  method 
through  which  the  annual  rate  for  a  given  week  or  month 
is  obtained.  All  cases  discovered  and  recorded  for  the 
first  time  in  a  given  week  are  multiplied  by  52,  as  an 
annual  rate  is  desired  instead  of  a  weekly  rate,  and 
divided  by  the  total  number  of  men  in  thousands  to  ob- 
tain the  rate  per  thousand.  Thus  if  one  man  in  a  group 
of  a  thousand  men  was  found  to  have  venereal  disease  in 
a  given  week,  the  annual  venereal  rate  per  thousand 
would  be  52  per  thousand  and  it  would  be  a  grave  error 
to  quote  the  figures  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  the  impres- 
sion that  52  infected  men  had  been  discovered  in  a  thou- 
sand in  one  week."*^  The  figure  52  would  merely  indi- 
cate that  at  that  rate — one  case  a  week — 52  cases  of 
venereal  disease  would  appear  among  a  thousand  men  in 
a  year.  These  figures  may  be  read  in  such  a  way  as  to 
exaggerate  the  evil  greatly. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  venereal  rate  in  the  army  should 
not  be  taken  as  an  adequate  index  of  the  extent  of  sexual 
immorality  among  young  men  in  civil  life.  It  is  the 
result  of  a  study  of  men  living  under  extraordinary 
repressive  and  protective  measures,  and  the  number  of 
cases  appearing  among  a  thousand  men  per  year  is 
probably  less  than  they  would  show  in  civil  life. 


in  between  were  amenable  to  the  influences  which  drew  them  either  way.  I 
mentioned  the  estimate  to  a  Canadian  soldier  and  he  said  he  would  make 
the  proportion  30-30." 

"  Surgeon  General's  Report,  June  30,  1918.  .      .      .  „ 

"William  F.  Snow.  M.D.,  "Venereal  Disease  Control  in  the  Army. 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  51 


The  annual  rate  of  admissions  for  venereal  disease  per 
thousand  based  on  reports  to  the  Surgeon  General  for  the 
twelve-week  period,  September  21  to  December  7,  1917, 
when  large  numbers  of  civilians  were  being  inducted  into 
service,  was  as  follows : 


"The  National  Army,  more  than  either  of  the  others,  is 
a  cross  section  of  the  physique  and  character  of  the  men 
of  this  country."*®  In  this  typical  cross  section,  at  the 
rate  above,  162  cases  would  appear  in  a  year  among  a 
thousand  men.  Presumably  the  same  men  would  not  be 
liable  to  develop  disease  more  than  once  in  a  year.  The 
figures  may  therefore  he  interpreted  as  meaning  that 
approximately  162  per  thousand,  or  16  per  cent  of  draft 
men  would  be  venereal  at  some  time  in  a  given  year.  It 
would  not,  however,  be  correct  to  infer  that  162  new 
cases  would  appear  in  a  thousand  men  every  year;  for 
we  must  not  forget  that  these  drafted  men  brought  with 
them  into  the  army  an  accumulation  of  venereal  disease 
contracted  during  several  years. 

The  United  States  Public  Health  Service  has  recently 
issued  figures  giving  "The  Percentage  of  Venereal  Dis- 
eases among  Approximately  the  Second  Million  Drafted 
Men — by  Cities."^°  These  figures  are  based  on  an 
examination  upon  arrival  in  mobilization  camps,  and 
include  only  obvious  cases  of  syphilis,  gonorrhea,  and 
chancroid.  They  vary  for  the  several  cities  listed  from 
.82  per  cent  to  27.45  per  cent  of  the  men  inducted  into 
service,  with  5.4  per  cent  as  an  average.  The  fact  that 
these  figures  indicate  the  cases  active  at  a  given  time 
rather  than  the  proportion  of  cases  developing  in  a  year 
presumably  accounts  for  their  being  so  much  lower  than 

*'  Rt.  Rev.  William  Lawrence,  "Venereal  Disease  in  the  Army,  Nary, 
and  Community." 

»» Issued  by  the  Treasury  Department.    V.  D.  No.  47. 


Regular  Army 
National  Guard 
National  Army 
Average 


88.0 
115.2 
162.4 
121.9 


52     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


those  referred  to  above.  It  has  also  to  be  borne  in  mind 
that  these  figures  measure  only  the  cases  among  the  men 
who  arrived  at  camps  and  take  no  account  of  men  who 
had  already  been  rejected  by  the  local  draft  boards  for 
various  causes,  including  venereal  diseases. 

The  venereal  rate  is  a  rough  index  of  the  situation,  but 
is  not  the  true  thermometer  of  the  moral  situation  in  an 
army.  "It  may  simply  indicate  scientific  skill  in  evading 
the  consequences  of  sexual  looseness.  The  prophylactic 
rate  in  connection  with  the  venereal  rate  is  a  truer  gauge. 
The  former  indicates  the  men  who  did  not  escape  physical 
penalties.  The  latter  shows  those  who  have  been  morally 
guilty  and  have  had  recourse  to  prophylaxis."^^ 

However,  the  prophylactic  rate  as  ordinarily  reported 
is  even  more  difficult  to  use  as  a  gauge  of  the  moral  situa- 
tion than  the  venereal  rate.  It  is  figured  in  the  same 
way,  by  multiplying  the  weekly  rate  per  thousand  by 
52  to  secure  an  annual  rate.  But  the  possibility  of  fre- 
quent repetitions  by  an  individual  man  enters  in  to 
confuse  the  problem.  Thus  it  is  theoretically  con- 
ceivable that  a  single  individual  might  receive  a  prophy- 
laxis for  every  week  in  the  year,  thus  bringing  the  rate 
per  thousand  up  to  52.  In  the  article  by  Colonel  Snow, 
already  referred  to,  several  charts  giving  the  annual 
prophylactic  rate  per  thousand,  based  on  the  experience 
in  camps  in  this  country,  are  included.  They  show  the 
rate  occasionally  rising  to  600  and  800.  Such  records 
are  vivid  evidence  of  the  effectiveness  of  prophylaxis  in 
reducing  disease  and  of  educational  repressive  measures 
in  reducing  illicit  sexual  intercourse,  but  they  give  little 
information  as  to  the  proportions  of  immorality.  Sixteen 
men  out  of  a  thousand  receiving  prophylaxis  during  a 
given  week  would  raise  the  annual  rate  for  that  week 
above  800. 

Mr.  Raymond  Fosdick  has  given  figures  on  prophy- 
laxis which  show  how  widely  the  rate  varied  according 


"  Chaplain  Brent's  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General. 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  53 


to  local  conditions.  "In  one  body  of  7,401  troops  belong- 
ing to  various  branches  of  the  service,  with  an  average 
of  seven  weeks  in  France,  only  56  prophylactic  treat- 
ments were  given  and  only  one  case  of  venereal  disease 
developed ;  during  two  months  in  France,  one  infantry 
regiment  of  3,267  men  had  a  record  of  only  eleven 
prophylactic  treatments  and  no  new  cases  of  disease.""* 
On  the  other  hand  the  following  figures  on  the  situa- 
tion in  a  base  port,  at  a  time  when  the  houses  of  prostitu- 
tion were  running  wide  open  and  were  frequented  in 
large  numbers  by  our  troops,  show  a  very  different 
condition. 

Month  Number  of  Troops  Prophylaxes  Disease  Cases 


August  4,571 
September  9,471 
October  3,966 


1,669  72 
3,392  124 
2,074  67 


Here  again  the  cases  of  prophylaxis  cannot  be  identi- 
fied with  the  number  of  men  receiving  treatment ;  2,074 
prophylaxes  do  not  equal  2,074  men.  For  example,  900 
men  of  whom  300  received  four  prophylaxes  a  month, 
300  received  two  prophylaxes  a  month,  and  300  received 
one  prophylaxis  a  month  would  account  for  2,100  treat- 
ments. Nevertheless,  such  a  prophylactic  rate  represents 
a  very  large  amount  of  sexual  immorality. 

From  such  data  as  this  it  is  clearly  impossible  to  draw 
very  accurate  conclusions  as  to  the  moral  situation.  It 
appears  that  not  less  than  53^  per  cent  of  men  of  draft 
age  throughout  the  United  States  have  venereal  disease 
at  a  given  time,  that  some  16  per  cent  are  liable  to  be 
venereal  at  some  time  during  a  year,  and  that  given  a  bad 
moral  environment  the  number  who  succumb  is  very 
large. 

To  date  it  has  not  been  possible  to  secure  figures  giv- 
ing the  actual  proportions  of  men  in  a  given  number 

"  From  an  article  in  The  New  Republic.  The  figures  are  given  in  sup- 
port of  the  proposition  that  it  is  "possible  for  men  living  constantly  together 
in  large  groups  to  be  sexually  continent  and  at  the  same  time  healthy  and 
contented." 


54     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


who  received  prophylaxis  at  some  time  during  an  ex- 
tended period.  Such  figures  would  be  the  most  accurate 
index  of  sexual  immorality. 

Obscenity  and  Profanity.  Obscenity  and  profanity 
were  very  prevalent  in  the  army.  The  following  are 
fairly  typical  of  replies  received  on  this  topic : 

"Swearing  has  grown  steadily  worse  and  taken  on  an 
added  picturesqueness  as  the  days  have  gone  by.  One 
interesting  observation  is  that  where  the  officers  have 
behaved  like  gentlemen  and  maintained  obedience  with- 
out cussing,  the  men  have  been  quick  to  follow  the  fine 
example  set  by  the  officers.  The  stream  of  profanity  in 
the  average  outfit  is  overwhelming.  All  attempt  by  chap- 
lains and  auxiliary  agencies  to  stem  the  tide  have  met 
with  little  success." 

"Obscenity  has  been  such  that  men  have  deliberately 
gone  out  from  the  barracks  to  escape  it.  Conditions  have 
varied  in  companies  but  in  many  places  the  self-respecting 
have  a  terrible  struggle  to  keep  their  ideals." 

"They  hear  and  use  a  lot  of  rough,  profane,  unmoral 
language.  They  jest  about  things  that  are  unclean  and 
sacred.   They  tell  smutty  stories  and  sing  ribald  songs." 

Gambling.  Gambling  was  very  general  both  among 
ofificers  and  men,  for  large  stakes  and  small,  in  home 
camps,  S.  O.  S.,  and  on  shipboard.  "One  must  say  with 
great  regret  that  gambling  was  the  prevailing  vice  of 
ofificers  in  virtually  every  group  touched.  No  one  thing 
has  been  more  commented  upon  regarding  the  evils  of 
ofificial  life  in  the  A.  E.  F.  than  this." 

Drunkenness.  Drunkenness  was  rare  in  the  army  by 
necessity  and  as  a  result  little  moral  significance  can  be 
given  to  any  report  upon  it.  Liquor  was  practically 
not  available  in  the  home  camps  and  in  many  locations 
in  France.  Where  it  was  easily  procured,  especially  in 
conjunction  with  much  idleness,  as  after  the  armistice, 
there  was  occasionally  and  locally  considerable  drunken- 
ness. It  is  fair  to  say  that  drunkenness  is  one  of  the 
moral  weaknesses  which  men  do  not  consider  very  bad. 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  LIFE  55 


These  are  vices  or  moral  weaknesses  which  average 
men  readily  condone  in  the  army  and  probably  condone 
in  civil  life.  To  condone  does  not  mean  to  approve. 
They  are  not  part  of  the  average  man's  ideal  of  life.  He 
does  not  out  and  out  believe  in  them.  But  they  are  not 
so  very  bad,  he  thinks,  at  least  not  so  wrong  as  the  par- 
sons think."* 

It  is  encouraging  that  from  an  intimate  contact  with 
these  average  men  with  their  mingled  virtues  and  vices 
so  many  have  come  to  a  renewed  faith  in  human  nature 
and  its  possibilities. 

"From  that  area,  in  which  the  most  foolish  and  wicked 
of  all  man's  activities  was  in  full  swing,  I  yet  brought 
back  a  new  faith  in  human  nature." 

"It  is  not  that  the  war  has  failed  to  produce  heroes,  so 
much  as  that  it  has  produced  heroism  in  a  torrent.  The 
great  man  of  the  war  is  the  common  man.  It  becomes 
ridiculous  to  pick  out  particular  names.  The  acts  of  the 
multitudinous  heroes  forbid  the  setting  up  of  effigies. 
When  I  was  a  young  man  I  imitated  Swift  and  posed 
for  cynicism.  I  will  confess  that  now  at  fifty,  and  greatly 
helped  by  this  war,  I  have  fallen  in  love  with  mankind."^* 

"In  crises  the  rich  man,  the  poor  man,  the  thief,  the 
harlot,  the  preacher,  the  teacher,  the  laborer,  the  ignorant, 
the  wise,  all  go  to  death  for  something  that  defies  death — 
something  immortal  in  the  human  spirit.  Those  truck- 
drivers,  those  mule-whackers,  those  common  soldiers, 

"  Norman  MacLean  makes  a  comment  whick  is  of  great  interest  in  this 
connection.    Probably  it  would  apply  equally  well  to  the  American  army. 

"A  curious  fact  is  the  lofty  standard  in  the  direction  of  self-control 
which  they  demand  from  chaplains.  The  most  typical  'old  soldier,'  with 
a  possibly  highly  colored  record,  will  become  a  severe  critic  of  a  padre  who 
fails  to  set  an  example  in  these  matters.  An  acute  observer  remarked  that 
this  universal  attitude  is  due  to  an  appreciation  of  metier.  A  soldier's 
business  is  to  be  brave;  a  solicitor's  to  be  trustworthy;  and  a  clerg>man's 
to  be  good.  And  inasmuch  as  self-mastery  is  an  essential  element  in  good- 
ness, it  is  demanded  of  the  chaplain.  The  fact  of  the  demand  indicates  the 
depth  of  the  appreciation  that  goodness  is  not  achieved  without  this  faculty. 
Perhaps,  too,  their  wistful  desire  to  achieve  it  for  themselves  makes  them 
demand  that  the  official  representatives  of  religion  shall  prove  in  practice 
that  its  achievement  is  possible.  A  failure  by  the  chaplains  may  do  some- 
thing to  dim  a  half-understood  hope.  However,  the  fact  is  there;  and  from 
it  we  may  at  least  infer  that  the  standards  of  private  life,  common  to  all 
branches  of  the  Church,  and  to  all  Christian  times,  will  not  be  deposed,  as 
ideals,  by  the  men  who  bear  arms." 

"Men  expect  you  to  set  an  example;  they  want  you  to  be  different  from 
them  but  they  don't  want  you  to  think  that  you  are."  (Bishop  Brent's 
Report  as  Senior  Chaplain.) 

^  H.  G.  Wells. 


56      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


that  doctor,  these  college  men  on  the  ambulance  are 
brothers  in  the  democracy  of  courage."^' 

"So  heart-breaking  and  yet  so  inspiring  has  been  this 
massive  heroism  of  the  common  rank  and  file  of  men, 
that  one  does  not  wonder  that  it  has  begotten  a  new 
religious  faith  and  led  one  like  H.  G.  Wells  to  say  on  the 
one  hand,  'Our  sons  have  shown  us  God,'  and  Dr.  T.  P. 
Forsyth  on  the  other  hand,  'God  has  shown  us  our 
sons.' 


»  William  Allen  White. 

"  Henry  Churchill  King,  "For  a  New  America  in  a  New  World." 


SUMMARY  OF  PART  I 


Let  us  now  attempt  a  brief  gathering  up  of  what  we 
have  learned  concerning  the  state  of  reHgion  in  the  United 
States  from  our  investigation  of  that  cross  section  of 
American  male  humanity  that  we  called  the  army.  But 
let  us  at  the  same  time  remember  that  for  a  large  part 
of  our  data  any  definite  generalization  is  impossible. 

1.  The  number  of  men  in  the  army  who  expressed 
themselves  as  having  no  religious  faith  was  negligible. 
The  great  majority  of  men  were  nominally  Christians 
and  a  large  proportion  had  some  Church  connection.  But 
the  number  who  were  conscious  Christians  and  in  active, 
vital  connection  with  the  Church  was  relatively  small. 

2.  Probably  the  most  outstanding  fact  that  emerges 
from  our  investigation  is  the  widespread  ignorance  as  to 
the  meaning  of  Christianity  and  misunderstanding  of  the 
fundamentals  of  Christian  faith  and  life — and  that  not 
only  among  men  outside  the  Church  but  also  among  those 
nominally  in  its  membership.  It  is  evident  that  the 
Church  has  seriously  failed  as  a  teacher  of  reHgion. 

3.  Although  the  great  majority  of  men  were  not  con- 
sciously Christians  and  not  in  vital  connection  with  the 
Church  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  there  were  thou- 
sands who  were  motivated  by  loyalty  to  Christ,  who  had 
a  definite  relationship  to  the  Church  and  who  bore  un- 
mistakable witness  to  the  reality  and  power  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith. 

4.  The  consciousness  of  denominational  diflferences 
among  Protestant  laymen  was  very  slight.  The  charac- 
teristic attitude  was  not  so  much  one  of  conscious  criti- 
cism of  denominational  lines  as  of  indifference  to  them 


58     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


and  practical  ignoring  of  them.  There  was  very  little 
demand  for  distinctively  denominational  ministrations  or 
services. 

6.  Criticisms  of  the  Church  for  inadequacy  in  its 
moral  life  were  fairly  common  along  the  following  lines: 
that  the  salvation  preached  by  the  Churches  is  narrowly 
selfish,  that  Christianity  is  presented  as  a  collection  of 
"don'ts,"  that  even  if  the  moral  standards  of  the  Church 
are  right  its  members  are  not  particularly  distinguishable 
for  their  all-round  goodness,  that  the  Church  does  not 
manifest  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  of  which  it  talks. 

6.  The  Church  was  also  criticized  on  the  ground  of 
the  unreality  or  triviality  of  its  work  along  the  following 
lines:  that  it  is  concerned  about  things  far  removed  from 
the  real  business  of  life,  that  it  emphasizes  unimportant 
matters  such  as  services  and  ritual,  that  its  "doings"  seem 
trivial  or  routine. 

7.  The  great  majority  of  men  have  some  religious 
ideas,  but  they  are  dim  and  vague.  Here  it  is  particularly 
difficult  to  generalize  but  the  following  tendencies  seem 
to  be  fairly  clear : 

(a)  Religion  is  regarded  as  primarily  a  matter  of 
deeds  rather  than  of  belief  or  worship. 

(b)  There  is  almost  universally  a  belief  in  God  and 
in  immortality  but  neither  conception  has  definitely  Chris- 
tian content.  It  is  a  vague  notion  of  the  general  benefi- 
cence of  the  universe  rather  than  faith  in  the  God  and 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

(c)  So  far  as  men  think  of  Christ  it  is  with  feelings 
of  respect,  but  to  great  numbers  He  is  only  a  dim  figure 
of  the  past  far  removed  from  their  present  interests  and 
needs. 

(d)  The  sense  of  sinfulness  and  of  need  of  "salva- 
tion" is  relatively  infrequent. 

8.  The  general  effect  of  contact  with  the  men,  with 


SUMMARY  OF  PART  I 


59 


their  mingled  virtues  and  moral  weaknesses,  has  been  to 
renew  faith  in  the  possibilities  of  human  nature. 

(a)  Under  the  stress  of  war  men  showed  the  elements 
of  great  Christian  virtues,  even  though  not  largely  mo- 
tivated by  conscious  allegiance  to  Christ.  The  following 
virtues  were  generally  admired  and  widely  found :  cour- 
age, unselfishness,  generosity,  straightforwardness,  hu- 
mility, loyalty,  devotion  to  home  and  mother. 

(b)  The  following  vices  were  widely  found  and 
largely  condoned:  sexual  immorality,  profanity,  obscen- 
ity, and  gambling. 

The  effect  of  military  training  and  war  upon  religion 
will  be  considered  in  subsequent  chapters  of  this  volume. 


PART  II 


THE  EFFECT  OF  THE  WAR  ON 
RELIGION  IN  THE  ARMY 


INTRODUCTION 


The  question  as  to  the  effect  of  the  war  on  the  religious 
life  of  men  in  the  army  has  certainly  received  much 
more  emphasis  in  current  discussions  than  the  disclosure 
that  the  war  has  made  as  to  the  religious  life  and  thought 
of  the  average  man.  It  is  a  subject  that  arouses  greater 
curiosity.  But  it  is  not  true  that  this  wider  interest 
necessarily  indicates  a  greater  importance.  What  we  are 
able  to  learn  concerning  the  state  of  religion  among  the 
men  inducted  into  the  service  has  much  more  to  teach  us 
as  to  what  the  Church  should  do  than  the  changes  which 
may  have  been  worked  in  some  of  them  by  war  or  mili- 
tary training.  In  so  far  as  the  conclusions  of  Part  I  are 
sound  they  are  suggestive  of  the  religious  situation 
among  the  mass  of  American  men.  The  direct  effects  of 
army  life  and  war  were  confined  to  the  four  million  odd 
who  were  in  service,  and  any  radical  changes  to  only  a 
part  of  them.^ 

It  is  natural  that  the  attempt  to  determine  the  effects 
of  army  life  upon  religion  should  call  forth  great  dif- 
ferences of  opinion,  for  the  effects  varied  according  to 
the  different  areas  in  which  the  men  were  distributed. 
There  were  four  main  areas  into  which  the  army  carried 
men:  (1)  the  home  training  camps  in  this  countr)-^;  (2) 
the  back  areas  or  Service  of  Supply  in  France;  (3)  the 
combat  areas  or  Zone  of  Advance  in  France;  (4)  the 
hospitals.   It  is  worth  while  to  recall  the  main  influences 

'  "In  the  calculation  of  future  tendencies  in  the  social,  political,  or  reli- 
gious spheres  after  the  war,  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  forget 
that  'when  the  boys  come  home'  it  is  only  a  bare  majority  of  them  to  whom 

most  of  what  we  have  been  saying  will  apply  The  war  has  brought, 

broadly  speaking,  only  two  influences  to  bear  on  the  whole  soldier  manhood 
of  our  country:  (a)  the  demand  for  self-sacrifice  in  a  righteous  cause;  (b) 
Army  life  and  discipline."    T.  W.  Pym,  "Papers  from  Picardy." 


64     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


that  were  brought  to  bear  on  the  men  within  these  vari- 
ous areas. 

1.  The  Home  Training  Camps. 

a.  Separation  from  home,  depending  of  course 
on  distance. 

h.  A  sudden  break  with  the  habits,  associations 
and  occupations  of  civil  life. 

c.  An  exclusively  male  community,  cf.  school  or 
college. 

d.  Lack  of  privacy. 

e.  Military  discipline  and  instruction. 
/.  The  expectation  of  active  service. 

g.  A  large  measure  of  protective  and  recrea- 
tional work. 

h.  Active  religious  work  by  welfare  agencies, 
camp  pastors,  and  chaplains. 

2.  The  Service  of  Supply  in  France. 

a.  A  more  complete  separation  from  home. 

b.  Foreign  environment,  customs,  standards. 

c.  d,  e.  As  above. 

/.  Frequently  no  great  risk  or  expectation  of 
active  service  and  generally  monotonous  tasks. 

g.  Much  less  protective  and  recreational  work. 

h.  Frequently  less  favorable  physical  conditions. 

i.  Less  religious  work. 

3.  Zone  of  Advance. 

a.  Prevalence  of  danger  and  death. 

b.  Mental  and  physical  discomfort  and  suflfering. 

c.  Excitation  of  combat. 

d.  Weariness. 

e.  Experience  of  mutual  dependence  and  physi- 
cal helplessness. 

/.  Chaplains.  The  chaplain  became  increasingly 
prominent,  and  his  religious  function  stood  out 
more  clearly  in  combat  areas  and  hospitals. 


INTRODUCTION 


65 


4.  Hospitals. 

a.  Physical  "let-down"  of  sickness  and  rest. 

b.  Quietness  and  the  opportunity  for  reflection. 

c.  Women. 

d.  Prevalence  of  suffering  and  death. 

e.  Chaplains. 

In  addition  to  these  main  influences  there  were  many 
purely  local  conditions  that  did  much  to  determine  the 
effect — e.g.,  the  character  and  standards  of  commanding 
officers,  the  caliber  of  the  chaplain  and  local  welfare 
workers,  the  predominant  tone  of  the  men,  the  moral 
environment  of  the  community.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that 
conditions  were  very  different  before  and  after  the 
armistice,  with  the  complete  shift  of  interests  and  the 
increase  of  idleness  and  restlessness,  and  it  is  easy  to 
realize  that  all  ready  generalization  as  to  the  religious 
effect  of  the  war  on  men  in  general  is  quite  impossible. 
In  considering  any  reported  change  all  these  factors  have 
to  be  taken  into  account. 

The  following  quotations  from  chaplains  will  empha- 
size the  importance  of  bearing  these  diverse  conditions 
in  mind : 

■"The  changes  made  by  the  war  vary  according  to  loca- 
tion. The  boys  who  remained  in  the  camps  in  the  States 
suffered  separation  from  home  and  relatives ;  those  who 
came  across  the  seas  and  remained  in  the  Service  of  Sup- 
ply had  added  to  this  experience  that  of  touch  with  a 
strange  people  with  strange  customs  in  a  strange  land; 
while  the  lads  who  were  at  the  battle  front  had  added 
experiences  which  registered  intenser  reactions." 

"At  the  front,  there  is  a  certain  moral  excitation.  Even 
if  it  is  not  religious  in  its  accent,  it  has  carrying  power 
which  takes  many  a  man  over  rough  places  and  affords  a 
point  of  contact  on  which  the  chaplain  may  stress  his 
message.  He  will  rarely  find  this  note  in  a  Base  Section. 
It  is  in  the  Service  of  Supply,  however,  that  most  of 
the  A.  E.  F.  are  doing  their  work.  The  Service,  for  the 
majority  of  the  men,  is  humdrum  and  uninteresting. 


66      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


The  conditions  under  which  officers  and  men  are  working 
are  abnormal.  There  is  little  of  the  appeal  to  ideals  and 
even  decencies  which  comes  with  family  life  and  home 
conditions."^ 

"It  may  have  been  true,  as  many  observers  have  said, 
that  during  the  war  the  soldier  was  unselfish  and  gener- 
ous. But  certainly  after  the  armistice — which  is  the  only 
period  I  know  anything  about — nothing  of  the  sort  was 
true  of  the  men  with  whom  I  was  stationed  in  France." 

With  these  considerations  in  mind  we  take  up  the 
various  effects  of  the  war  on  religion  as  discussed  in  the 
reports  that  have  come  to  us.  It  is  convenient  to  deal 
with  them  under  three  headings  : 

The  Effect  of  the  War  on  Personal  Religion— Faith 
and  Practice. 

The  Effect  on  the  Church  and  Churchmanship. 

The  Effect  on  Moral  Life  and  Standards. 


'  Chaplain  Brent's  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  EFFECT  OF  MILITARY  TRAINING  AND 
WAR  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION 

In  view  of  the  diversity  of  conditions  and  the  conflict 
of  reports  it  would  be  futile  and  premature  to  attempt 
any  statement  as  to  whether  the  total  effect  on  personal 
religion  has  been  favorable  or  unfavorable.  We  do  not 
know.  The  witnesses  differ  very  widely  in  their  judg- 
ment. A  considerable  group  believe  that  considering  the 
men  as  a  whole  there  has  been  no  great  change  in  either 
direction.   The  following  are  typical  of  such  an  opinion : 

"I  confess  I  cannot  see  the  change  some  men  say  they 
see." 

"The  answers  [to  a  questionnaire  sent  to  pastors  in 
Bloomington  inquiring  about  the  returned  soldiers]  were 
unanimous  in  the  belief  that  the  men  were  not  much 
changed."^ 

"The  fifth  question  in  a  questionnaire  distributed 
among  officers  was,  'Does  army  life  make  you  more 
religious  or  less?'  Out  of  the  fifty-six  questionnaires 
filled  out,  thirty-five  left  this  question  unanswered. 
Eleven  said,  'Neither.'  Six  thought  it  made  them  more 
religious  and  four  thought  it  made  them  less  so.  It  is  a 
fair  presumption  to  believe  that  the  thirty-five  who  failed 
to  answer  this  question  did  not  recognize  any  definite 
change  in  their  religious  life  due  to  army  conditions."* 

"The  religious  condition  of  the  men  in  the  line  was 
just  the  same  as  one  finds  it  at  home, — with  the  veneering 
taken  off." 

"Do  not  think  that  the  war  had  very  much  effect  on 
the  religious  life  of  the  men  generally." 

"On  the  whole  men  are  going  to  be  less  markedly 
different  after  a  few  months  in  France  than  most  people 


'  Edgar  D.  Tones,  in  The  Christian  Century. 

*  Edwin  A.  McAlpin,  Jr.,  in  The  Presbyterian  Advance. 


68     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


think.  There  are  very  few  people  upon  whom  the  war 
has  had  a  revolutionary  effect." 

"So  far  as  religion  is  concerned  there  is  little  change. 
Those  who  were  religious  before  the  war  are  the  ones 
who  are  now  of  that  type.  Those  who  were  not  are  not 
now.  Of  course,  for  both  of  these  classes  some  men  have 
been  chosen." 

Of  those  who  believe  the  total  effect  of  army  life  to 
have  been  conducive  to  religion  the  following  are  repre- 
sentative : 

"In  reference  to  personal  religious  experience,  all 
except  one  thought  it  had  been  deepened  and  made  more 
real  by  war,  and  all  feel  that  soldiers  will  go  back  stronger 
men  and  more  valuable  to  the  community  for  high  ends. 
Some  confessed  a  lapse  into  a  lower  plane  of  living."^ 

"I  think  there  has  been  a  deepening  of  religious  experi- 
ence as  they  have  been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  most 
serious  issues  of  life." 

"If  that  be  the  heart  and  essence  of  religion,  then  with- 
out any  hesitation  whatever,  I  would  say  that  our  men 
by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  have  found  religion. 
They  have  been  answering  with  the  best  they  had  to  the 
voice  of  the  best  they  knew." 

"After  having  eaten  with  these  men,  marched  with 
them,  lived  with  them  for  eighteen  months,  under  condi- 
tions which  they  hated,  in  circumstances  which  they 
loathed,  I  believe  that  the  majority  of  them  are  spiritu- 
ally better  men  than  when  they  came  over." 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  many  views  such  as  these  : 

"More  have  fallen  from  their  ideal  than  have  risen  to 
a  higher  level." 

"War  itself  has  never  made  men  religious  and  never 
will.  Some  who  had  religion  will  have  lost  it,  and  a  very 
few  may  have  found  it." 

"While  the  good  effects  of  a  war  are  seen  more  clearly 
after  it  is  over,  certainly  during  the  war  the  vast  majority 
of  men  at  the  front  would  almost  unanimously  agree  that 
the  preponderatory  influence  and  effect  for  the  time  being 
is  evil.""  ' 

"Here  and  there  one  has  had  a  spiritual  life  deepened 

'  Report  on  Conference  of  sixty-five  enlisted  men  in  "Y"  hut  overseas. 
•  Sherwood  Eddy,  "With  Our  Soldiers  in  France." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  69 


by  what  he  has  seen  and  experienced  but  the  great  ma- 
jority have  felt  the  awful  blight  and  deterioration  of 
war." 

"The  majority  of  officers  and  men  have  suffered  incal- 
culable spiritual  loss  during  these  terrible  months.  Reli- 
gion was  for  the  time  being  quite  neglected  if  not  forgot- 
ten. As  for  prayers  and  devotion — well  it  is  easy  to  build 
up  an  ideal  story  on  the  basis  of  a  few  isolated  cases. 
Back  in  the  S.  O.  S.  the  same  was  true  to  a  less  degree. 
There  temptations  were  multiplied  and  many  men  threw 
away  former  restraints.  Religion  had  more  chance  to 
assert  itself,  but  there  also  religion  suffered.  The  ten- 
dency was  to  lose  ground." 

Manifestly  we  have  no  scale  of  values  by  which  to 
weigh  the  results.  How  would  we  weigh  a  momentary 
and  thrilling  experience  of  dependence  on  God  against  a 
breakdown  of  normal  religious  habits?  How  balance  a 
perhaps  temporary  increase  in  certain  types  of  unselfish- 
ness against  a  perhaps  temporary  increase  in  sexual 
immorality?  Which  is  to  count  for  more,  an  intense 
spiritual  experience  among  a  few  or  a  general  hardening 
of  the  sensibilities  of  many,  a  freshened  assurance  of 
immortality  or  a  lessened  sense  of  fundamental  moral 
alternatives?  If  one  says  that  the  war  fostered  or  hin- 
dered religion,  it  is  necessary  to  ask  what  phase  of  reli- 
gion he  means,  in  which  circumstances  of  war  it  was  true, 
and  what  remains  after  these  peculiar  circumstances 
have  ceased  to  exist. 

GENERAL  EFFECT  ON  INTEREST  IN  RELIGION 
Whatever  may  be  our  judgment  as  to  the  total  effect 
of  the  war  on  the  religion  of  men  in  the  army  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  in  all  the  military  areas  there  were  situa- 
tions  or  occasions  which  "made  men  think" — not  think 
through,  but  question.  This  was  particularly  true  at  the 
times  of  crisis  such  as  enlistment,  call,  embarkation,  ad- 
vance to  the  front,  preparation  for  attack,  and  being 
wounded.  No  doubt  the  routine  of  army  life  is  in  the 
main  deadening  to  serious  reflection.    But  certain  occa- 


70      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


sions  are  stimulating.  Any  sudden  change  of  life  or 
breakdown  of  the  accustomed  tends  to  make  the  more 
thoughtful  reconsider.  It  becomes  less  easy  to  take  life 
and  its  routine  for  granted. 

"There  are  men,  and  I  believe  not  a  few,  in  whom  the 
doing  of  this  one  deed  [enlistment]  deflects  the  whole 
balance  of  existence  into  generous  and  devoted  ways. 
An  abrupt  release  from  self-absorption  has  for  most 
human  beings  the  force  of  a  discovery. "'^ 

The  period  of  adjustment  at  least  stirs  questions  in 
many  minds  and  the  expectation  and  prevalence  of  death 
naturally  stir  men  to  a  hasty  review  of  their  own  lives. 

"Death  is  a  great  teacher;  from  him  men  learn  what 
are  the  things  they  really  value."* 

The  fundamental  questions  come  to  the  surface.  And 
in  so  far  as  religion  offers  answers  theoretical  or  practical 
to  life's  fundamental  questions,  some  turning  to  religion 
must  be  expected.  It  is  not  uncommon  for  chaplains  to 
report  that  they  believe  that  many  men  are  returning 
from  active  combat  quickened  in  religious  interest. 

"The  men  who  arrive  from  overseas  seem  generally  to 
be  in  a  more  thoughtful  frame  of  mind  than  a  similar 
cross  section  of  men  from  home." 

This  does  not  necessarily  mean,  however,  that  they 
are  more  religious,  only  more  serious  or  thoughtful. 

"Being  serious  and  being  religious  are  two  very  differ- 
ent qualities.  One  furnishes  very  splendid  soil  for  the 
cultivation  of  the  other :  and  good  soil  is  primarily  what 
the  soldier  is  bringing  back  to  America."® 

Perhaps  it  cannot  be  safely  asserted  that  the  average 
soldier  is  returning  a  more  serious  man,  but  at  any  rate 
there  were  many  occasions  which  made  him  temporarily 
more  serious.  In  some  places  chaplains  noted  very  dis- 
tinct fluctuations  of  religious  interest.  One,  writing  of 
his  experience  in  a  home  training  camp,  speaks  of  "the 


'W.  E.  Hocking,  in  Atlantic  Monthly. 
*  Donald  Hankey,  "Student  in  Arms." 
'  Orlo  C.  Brown,  in  The  Christian  Advocate. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  71 


distinct  and  unmistakable  religious  reactions  which  accom- 
panied an  overseas  movement  of  the  troops.  I  was  sta- 
tioned at  Camp  Merritt  at  the  time  with  most  favorable 
opportunities  for  contact  with  the  men.  Without  excep- 
tion I  found  them  thinking  deeply.  They  were  not  only 
open  to  approach,  but  invited  and  sought  religious  in- 
struction and  help.  Equally  as  obvious  is  the  unmistak- 
able subsidence  of  the  tide  of  religious  interest  since  the 
cessation  of  hostilities." 

In  addition  to  these  occasional  stirrings  of  the  religious 
interest,  many  men  in  the  army  came  under  the  influence 
of  religious  workers.  The  same  publicity  which  un- 
doubtedly militated  against  religion  in  other  directions 
made  it  a  public  function.  Services  were  held  in  the  local 
club  (i.e.,  the  "Y")  or  in  the  village  square  or  in  the  hos- 
pital ward.  The  chaplain  was  not  only  a  religious  worker 
but  an  official  of  the  organization  to  which  every  man 
belonged.  The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  both  by  necessity  and  by 
intention  often  combined  religious  appeal  with  recreation 
or  entertainment.^"  Whatever  the  total  effect  may  have 
been,  it  is  unquestionably  true  that  many  men  were 
"exposed"  to  religious  ideas  and  religious  conviction  who 
had  been  long  out  of  reach  of  them. 

"The  soldier  had  religion  thrust  upon  his  attention  in 
all  kinds  of  ways  and  by  agencies  too  numerous  and  well- 
known  to  catalogue."  "The  regular  chaplain's  services 
brought  many  'to  church'  who  had  not  been  in  the  habit 
of  going  and  I  believe  there  was  some  thinking  stimulated 
in  the  minds  of  the  men." 

One  needs  no  reports  from  chaplains  to  know  that 
under  such  conditions  many  men  whose  faith  was  latent 
or  untried  found  a  more  conscious  and  active  faith.  It 
is  analogous  to  the  heightening  of  physical  life  in  the 
face  of  danger  or  unusual  effort.  War  called  for  self- 
control,  disinterestedness,  self-surrender,  trust,  faith; 

">  "The  Triangle  Team  was  advertised  not  to  do  evangelistic  work  as  it 
is  usually  called,  but  to  give  the  men  a  jolly  song  hour  followed  by  a  straight 
talk  on  subjects  that  would  interest  them. 


72     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


and  where  men  had  been  trained  to  look  for  these  things 
in  religion,  they  naturally  looked  more  earnestly.  "In  a 
large  number  of  cases,  religion  has  become  a  more  real 
concern  of  life,  and  personal  faith  has  been  deepened  and 
strengthened." 

"I  have  seen  in  these  weeks  at  least  one  hundred  men 
whose  faces  beamed  with  the  joy  of  a  new  found  faith 
and  whose  words  testified  to  their  awakened  knowledge 
of  the  love  of  God." 

Beyond  this  heightening  of  religious  life  among  many 
of  that  minority  who  went  into  war  definitely  religious, 
there  was  undoubtedly  in  home  camps  and  hospitals  and 
leave-areas  a  considerable  body  of  formal  new  decisions 
or  conversions.  Dr.  Kelman,  in  his  Yale  Lectures  on 
Preaching,  speaking  of  his  experiences  with  British 
troops,  said  there  were  many  instances  of  a  sharply  de- 
fined experience  of  conversion  and  went  on  to  say, 
"These,  I  think,  were  for  the  most  part  connected  with 
sudden  reversions  to  the  religious  experiences  of  child- 
hood." The  same  would  probably  hold  for  our  own 
forces ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  "many  instances" 
does  not  mean  overwhelming  numbers. 

Of  course,  we  have  reports  which  deal  in  large  figures. 
One  Y.  M.  C.  A.  worker,  speaking  of  an  evangelistic  tour, 
writes :  "Tens  of  thousands  of  men  dedicated  themselves 
to  God  in  this  open  manner  in  the  presence  of  their  com- 
rades. Afterwards  very  many  signed  the  war  roll  cards, 
pledging  allegiance  to  Christ."  The  words  which  he 
called  upon  the  men  to  utter  were  these :  "I  hereby  dedi- 
cate my  manhood  to  God  and  to  country  and  to  home. 
May  God  help  me  to  keep  my  vow."  Sherwood  Eddy 
describes  an  evangelistic  meeting  of  the  type  common 
in  the  camps  both  in  this  country  and  in  France : 

"We  have  had  them  forty  minutes  now  and  many  a 
man  is  listening  as  for  his  life.  We  hold  up  the  pledge 
card  of  the  war  roll.  'How  many  of  you  are  willing  to 
take  your  stand  against  drink,  gambling,  and  impurity? 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  73 


To  break  away  from  sin  and  to  sign  the  war  roll  which 
says  "I  pledge  my  allegiance  to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as 
my  Saviour  and  King,  by  God's  help  to  fight  his  battles 
and  bring  victory  to  his  kingdom"?  Who  will  take  his 
stand  for  Christ  and  sign  tonight?'  Here  and  there  all 
over  the  house  men  begin  to  rise.  A  hundred  come 
forward  to  get  cards  and  sign  them." 

A  Methodist  camp  pastor  writes:  "A  few  nights  ago 
I  held  a  service  in  a  'Y'  hut.  It  was  packed  with  men. 
When  I  gave  them  an  opportunity  to  decide  for  Christ, 
it  was  impossible  to  count  the  hands  that  went  up."  An 
account  in  The  Standard  of  the  experience  of  two  Baptist 
preachers  in  France  says,  "At  one  of  these  great  meetings 
nearly  a  thousand  men  declared  their  acceptance  of  Christ 
as  a  personal  Saviour." 

Clearly,  however,  the  raising  of  the  hand,  or  even  the 
signing  of  a  pledge  card,  cannot  be  identified  with  any- 
thing so  fundamental  or  original  as  conversion.  It  may 
safely  be  said  that  a  very  large  number  of  the  men  thus 
expressing  themselves  were  already  definitely  affiliated 
with  some  branch  of  the  Church.  And  anyone  familiar 
with  evangelistic  work  realizes  that  it  is  often  easier  for 
a  man  to  raise  his  hand  or  give  his  assent  than  not  to. 
Some  of  the  pledges  taken,  such  as  the  first  mentioned 
above,  were  closely  associated  with  a  general  vow  of 
loyalty  to  home  and  country.  As  to  the  value  of  such 
results  sincere  Christians  will  inevitably  differ,  according 
as  they  belong  to  those  branches  of  the  Church  which 
believe  in  the  great  value  of  open  and  reiterated  decision 
or  to  those  which  believe  that  such  expression  tends  to 
exhaust  the  religious  impulses  and  deflect  energy  from 
progressive  Christian  nurture.  There  is  obviously  no 
way  of  discovering  what  proportion  of  such  decisions 
were  new  or  how  fundamental  they  were.  Whether  we 
take  such  incidents  as  evidence  of  a  "revival"  in  the 
army  will  depend  on  what  we  mean.  A  writer  in  a 
church  paper,  arguing  against  Dr.  Fosdick's  statement  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  that  there  was  not  a  revival  of  reli- 


74     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


gion  at  the  front,  says :  "Parents  and  pastors  have  enough 
testimonial  letters  in  their  possession  and  a  sufficient 
number  of  returned  men  are  bearing  witness  to  their 
discovery  of  God,  to  constitute  a  fairly  large  sized  revival 
result."  But  we  believe  that  chaplains  in  the  main  would 
agree  that  there  was  no  large  accession  to  the  ranks  of 
definite  Christianity  and  no  wholesale  mass  movement 
toward  religion. 

Such  decisions  as  were  made  or  renewed,  at  least  under 
the  guidance  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  appeal,  took  the  form 
in  the  main  of  a  renunciation  of  certain  vices,  such  as 
gambling,  drinking,  and  impurity,  and  a  new  resolution 
to  make  Christ  the  authority  in  their  lives,  and  serve  the 
cause  they  were  fighting  for  as  His. 

The  formal  new  decisions  made  under  the  influence  or 
guidance  of  religious  workers  were  mainly  confined  to 
the  home  camps,  the  hospitals,  and  the  back  areas  in 
France,  where  active  religious  work  was  practicable.  In 
the  Zone  of  Advance  and  perhaps  to  some  extent  in  other 
areas  at  times  of  crisis  there  were  many  new  resolutions. 
"This  sector  [the  Z.  of  A.]  was  the  place  of  vows  and 
many  new  resolutions."  Under  the  pressure  of  danger 
or  in  the  relief  of  escape,  men  resolved  henceforth  to 
rea-d  their  Bibles  or  say  their  prayers  or  "be  good"  or  go 
to  church.  A  captain  writes  in  a  letter  to  his  mother: 
"A  lot  of  us  who  have  not  been  exactly  angels  before 
this  affair  have  made  certain  resolves  that  are  pretty 
sure  to  be  kept."  A  hospital  chaplain  reports:  "Every 
day  I  heard  some  such  statement  as  this:  T  have  never 
had  much  to  do  with  religion,  but  I'm  going  to  have 
something  to  do  with  it  from  now  on.' "  It  would,  how- 
ever, be  an  optimist  who  would  expect  any  very  large 
direct  gain  from  such  resolutions.  Unquestionably,  there 
were  some  that  were  deep  and  will  bear  fruit.  But  "many 
men  who  were  ready  to  reveal  deep  conviction  and  faith 
while  they  were  in  bed  and  separated  from  companion- 
ship quickly  returned  to  a  hard  and  indifferent  exterior 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  75 


when  they  were  well  enough  to  mingle  with  other  soldiers. 
These  and  other  things  constantly  raised  a  question  as 
to  how  far  the  good  influences  and  good  intentions  which 
came  out  under  army  conditions  and  in  suffering  would 
survive  when  they  went  back  to  old  surroundings."  The 
same  observation  and  the  same  questions  apply  also  to 
the  difference  between  the  combat  and  the  leave  areas.^^ 
In  the  deepened  religious  life  of  a  few,  in  the  new 
resolutions  made  by  many  men  and  carried  back  to 
America  by  some,  a  good  many  chaplains  find  much  en- 
couragement. And  it  cannot  be  said  that  in  the  reports 
received  there  is  much  evidence  of  clear  and  unmistak- 
able loss.  A  British  chaplain  says  that  he  heard  many 
times  in  substance  the  following  bitter  caricature  of  the 
creed:  "I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty,  and  the 
trench  mortar  has  just  blown  my  pal,  who  was  a  clean- 
living  lad,  to  pieces ;  and  God  is  love,  and  they  crucified 
the  sergeant  major ;  and  peace  on  earth,  good  will  towards 
men,  and  I  stuck  my  bayonet  through  his  body;  and 
Jesus  died  to  save  us  from  sin,  and  the  Boche  has  been 
raping  women ;  and  this  war  never  ends."  Few  reports 
of  this  type  of  development  among  American  troops  have 
come  to  our  attention.  Dr.  E.  D.  Jones,  in  The  Christian 
Century,  tells  of  a  soldier  who,  on  being  asked  by  a  "Y" 
man  to  join  a  Bible  class,  repHed:  "Hell,  no!  that  is, 
not  now.  The  Bible  teaches  us  to  love  our  enemies ;  let's 
finish  up  this  killing  business  before  we  take  up  Bible 
study  again."  Another  worker  quotes  a  private  as 
saying,  "There  is  no  place  for  religion  in  the  life  of  any 
soldier."  And  an  officer  said:  "Of  course  the  men  are 
worse  than  when  they  came  over  After  such  train- 
ing life  is  not  held  sacred  Hell !    How  can  you 

"  C/.  T.  M.  Pym,  in  "Papers  from  Picardy":  "Close  acquaintance  with 
death  has  much  to  do  with  their  attitude;  escape  suggests  to  the  reflective 
mood  regret  for  lost  opportunities  in  the  past — opportunities  for  good  or  evil. 
A  man  of  one  kind  thanks  God  for  deliverance  and  leaps  at  the  fresh  lease 
of  life  in  which  he  may  use  such  time  as  is  left  him  in  order  to  fit  himself 
for  service  in  this  world  and  beyond.  Another  man  merely  laments  that 
he  has  allowed  himself  so  nearly  to  pass  out  with  many  of  the  'joys  of  life' 
untasted,  and  determines  to  make  up  for  lost  time  in  his  next  leave  or  after 
the  war." 


76      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


kill  a  man  saying  to  yourself,  'I  love  your  soul'?  All 
rot!"   This  attitude,  however,  is  not  commonly  reported 
/    and  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  typical. 

It  would  be  reasonable  to  expect  that  men  whose  reli- 
gion had  been  largely  nominal — a  routine  of  observance 
or  a  set  of  inherited  explanations — would  find  in  the  face 
of  war  that  the  routine  was  ineffective  and  the  explana- 
tions inadequate.  And  we  would  suppose  that  many 
men  would  feel  a  tremendous  and  unsettling  conflict 
between  the  Christian  view  and  way  of  life  and  the 
brutalities  of  war.  But  chaplains  do  not  often  speak  of 
these  as  observed  results. 

What  some  chaplains  and  some  men  do  feel  very 
strongly  is  that  combatant  service  produced  a  general 
dulling  of  sensibilities  and  lowering  of  standards  which 
more  than  offset  the  religious  gains.  They  say  that  it 
enforced  such  preoccupation  with  the  elementary  physi- 
cal needs,  was  so  raw  and  hard  a  life,  as  seriously  to 
threaten  the  spirit.  "Brutalized"  is  much  too  strong  a 
word  for  anyone  to  use  in  describing  the  effect  of  com- 
batant service  on  the  majority  of  men.  Its  effect  was  not 
inevitably  nor  universally  bad.  But  the  easiest  way  for 
many  men  to  meet  its  brutalities  and  coarseness  was  by 
a  quiet  "hardening"  of  the  heart  and  a  relaxing  of  former 
standards  of  daily  life. 

THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD  AT  THE  FRONT 
Many  chaplains  believe  that  the  experiences  of  the 
front  lines  brought  many  men  to  a  more  vivid  sense  of 
the  need  and  reality  of  God.  There  has  doubtless  been 
exaggeration  in  the  reporting  or  phrasing  of  this  fact  but 
the  testimony  remains.  To  say  that  there  were  no 
atheists  at  the  front  is  manifestly  overshooting  the  mark. 
To  say  that  the  front  was  a  place  where  atheism  kept 
quiet,  where  there  was  little  satisfaction  in  unbelief, 
where  men  wanted  to  beHeve,  would  be  nearer  the  truth. 
Such  a  remark  as  "If  a  man  was  not  a  Christian  when 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  77 


he  went  over  the  top  he  would  be  before  he  came  back," 
is  hardly  a  commendation  of  Christianity.  And  such 
remarks  as  these,  made  after  a  remarkable  escape,  "The 
Old  Man  must  have  been  with  me  then,"  and,  "I  sure 
did  love  the  Lord  then,"  do  not  have  the  ring  of  authentic 
religious  experience.  But  allowing  for  the  exaggeration 
of  enthusiasm  there  remain  the  repeated  assertions  of 
many  chaplains. 

"God's  presence  has  become  a  fact  of  experience  with 
many  of  the  men  who  have  been  in  action." 

"Interest  has  been  intensified  in  a  real  God." 

"A  large  number  admit  a  more  earnest  faith  in  God." 

"It  is  a  saying  at  the  front  that  the  only  soldier  who 
doesn't  believe  in  God  is  the  one  who  has  never  been 
under  shell  fire  or  bombs." 

"A  few  undoubtedly  have  been  brought  closer  to  God 
as  a  result  of  their  experiences." 

In  the  stress  of  battle  men  have  approached  God  mainly 
as  Companion  and  Protector.  The  thought  of  Him  as 
Judge  or  Saviour  does  not  appear  to  have  been  empha- 
sized. It  was  in  their  loneliness  and  entire  dependence 
that  men  sought  Him  and  found  Him.  "It  is  noteworthy 
that  alike  among  the  men  at  sea  and  at  the  front  religious 
feeling  is  said  to  take  the  form  not  so  much  of  desire  for 
salvation  as  for  companionship."^^  "There  are  moments 
when  a  touch  of  searching  fear  reminds  one  of  the  lone- 
liness of  every  personal  self  in  that  vast  mill  of  misery 
and  death  and  one  achieves  the  denial  that  this  apparent 
loneliness  is  real,  because  existence  itself  is  a  companion- 
ship with  an  unseen  but  inescapable  will."^^ 

It  is  some  such  moment  as  that  which  a  chaplain 
describes : 

"He  was  with  a  well-known  artillery  regiment  in  the 
Chateau-Thierry  battle.  A  certain  battery  occupied  a 
position  exposed  to  the  fiercest  fire  of  the  Boche.  At  one 
time  the  C.  O.  had  to  send  a  message  to  another  battery 
posted  on  an  adjoining  hill,  and  called  one  of  the  lieu- 

"  Archbishops'  Third  Committee  of  Inquiry. 

"  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  in  Atlantic  Monthly. 


78     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


tenants  to  go  and  straighten  out  a  mix-up  that  had  oc- 
curred. The  lieutenant  told  the  chaplain  about  it  next 
day,  saying:  'When  I  looked  down  that  valley  it  didn't 
seem  possible  to  get  through.  Shells  were  bursting  so 
fast  that  the  whole  valley  seemed  to  be  on  fire,  and  it 
looked  as  if  every  foot  of  it  was  being  covered.  Well,  as 
I  started  down,  I  suddenly  thought  of  some  words  which 
I  had  heard  you  read  at  a  funeral  the  day  before,  and 
which  had  impressed  me  at  the  time,  and  as  I  walked 
along,  I  said — "Though  I  walk  through  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death  I  will  fear  no  evil,  for  thou  art  with 
me" ;  and  I  felt  better.  I  kept  saying  those  words  over 
to  myself  until  I  got  back.  That's  twice  I've  prayed  and 
if  a  man  can  pray  when  he's  in  danger,  he  can  pray  when 
he's  not.  I'm  going  to  be  a  good  sport  and  begin  to  say 
my  prayers.' 

There  is  no  question  but  that  the  more  common  ap- 
proach to  God  stimulated  by  battle  was  through  the  ex- 
perience of  physical  dependence  and  the  need  for  a 
Protector.  "I  fancy  that  most  men  in  service  take  a  dip 
at  some  time  or  other  into  piety  of  a  very  different  sort — 
that  of  personal  safety-seeking.  Prayer  for  most  men  in 
peril  becomes  an  instinctive  petition  for  personal  deliver- 
ance."^* That  there  was  a  great  deal  of  prayer  of  a  sort 
at  the  front  appears  to  be  certain : 

"I  have  yet  to  meet  the  man  who  does  not  admit  that 
under  fire  he  prayed  simply  because  he  could  not  help  it." 

"Certainly  there  was  much  prayer  in  the  trenches." 

"As  to  praying  among  the  soldiers,  I  saw  only  one 
fellow  praying  on  his  knees  in  the  whole  year  I  have 
been  in  the  army,  but  when  we  go  up  to  the  front  every- 
body prays  to  himself."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

"Most  of  them  prayed  before  going  over  the  top. 
Most  of  them  had  not  prayed  before  since  they  were 
little  children." 

"If  ever  I  prayed  in  my  life  I  did  when  I  went  over  the 
top."    (An  enHsted  man.) 

"  Cf.  Chaplain  Tiplady's  story  of  a  young  British  soldier  who,  when  cut 
off  and  compelled  to  wait  for  five  hours  in  a  shell  hole  for  darkness  and  the 
opportunity  to  crawl  back  to  his  regiment,  read  Francis  Thompson's 
"Hound  of  Heaven"  and  in  the  assurance  of  God's  presence  found  comfort 
and  strength. 

"  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  in  Atlantic  Monthly. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  79 


"I'm  not  much  on  religion  as  they  preach  it,  but  any 
man  who  says  he  did  not  pray  at  the  front  is  lying."  (A 
captain.) 

"I  never  offered  up  a  prayer  at  night  at  all  until  I 
went  up  into  the  battle  area,  but  there,  I  can  tell  you,  I 
prayed  with  a  vengeance."    (An  officer.)^* 

That  a  very  large  part  of  this  praying  was  stimulated 
by  fear  and  took  the  form  of  petitions  for  physical  pro- 
tection is  equally  certain.  But  it  would  be  untrue  to  say 
that  all  the  praying  was  of  this  sort.  Men  prayed  also  for 
courage  and  for  friends  and  for  victory.  "I  would  like 
to  be  a  Christian,"  said  a  man  to  a  chaplain,  "for  I  have 
learned  that  I  am  a  coward."  "For  the  first  time  perhaps 
in  his  life  the  sense  of  human  dependence  had  dawned  on 
him.  He  had  never  felt  any  need  before  that  his  pay 
check  did  not  seem  to  cover  or  would  not  have  seemed  to 
cover  if  it  had  been  large  enough.  Now  he  found  himself 
in  a  world  that  necessitated  a  new  sort  of  power  to  meet 
his  needs.  There  must  be  someone  to  whom  he  could 
commit  his  friends  at  home,  to  whom  he  could  trust  him- 
self, and  upon  whom  he  could  lean  should  he  pass  into 
the  unknown."^'  Even  the  cruder  prayers  for  physical 
protection  were  not  without  other  elements.  There  was 
penitence  in  some,  as  in  the  case  of  the  captain  who 
reported  his  prayer  to  a  chaplain:  "I  have  done  many 
things  I  am  ashamed  of,  but  please  God,  give  me  another 
chance."  There  was  resolution  in  some  of  them,  such  as 
that  of  the  young  Jew  who  said  to  his  chaplain :  "When 
I  was  at  the  front  I  promised  God  to  cut  out  everything 
if  he  would  save  me  from  shells."  Then  he  added  with  a 
laugh,  "But  all  them  things  is  vanished  now." 

For  the  emergency  religion  of  the  trenches  few  will 
have  any  great  admiration.   It  is  a  pity  that  some  in  their 

"  If  one  exception  is  necessary  to  qualify  some  of  the  more  inclusive 
generalizations,  here  it  is.  A  marine  was  asked  what  his  thoughts  were  when 
he  got  up  into  danger.  "I  had  no  religious  idea  at  all,"  he  said.  "The  one 
thing  that  kept  saying  itself  over  and  over  again  was  this:  I  have  ten  thou- 
sand dollars  insurance,  I  have  ten  thousand  dollars  insurance,  I  have  ten 
thousand  dollars  insurance,  it  don't  make  any  difference." 

"  Chaplain  Dancey,  in  Northwestern  Christian  Advocate. 


80     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


eagerness  to  have  religion  thrive  have  not  been  very 
particular  as  to  what  sort  this  religion  should  be.  But 
such  religion  does  not  thrive  for  long.  "Many  have  'de- 
veloped' religion  through  the  persuasion  of  a  barrage, 
but  most  of  these  have  had  time  to  'recover'  and  are  now 
their  normal  selves  again." 

Professor  Macintosh's  comment,  based  on  the  observa- 
tion of  British  troops,  should  be  sufficient  to  moderate 
any  too  great  enthusiasm  over  trench  religion: 

"Much  the  same  thing  may  be  said  of  trench  religion 
as  is  notoriously  true  of  'death-bed'  repentance.  It  some- 
times has  a  discernibly  permanent  effect,  but  speaking 
generally,  it  tends  to  disappear  when  the  danger  is  over. 
It  is  a  well  known  fact  that  when  the  troops  are  expecting, 
in  the  course  of  a  few  hours,  to  go  into  action,  it  is  not 
a  difficult  thing  to  get  them  almost  to  a  man  to  partake  of 
the  sacraments  of  the  Church.  But  the  writer  can  say 
from  his  own  observation  in  a  camp  made  up  of  veterans 
who  have  been  for  some  months — in  hospital,  con- 
valescent home  and  command  depot — away  from  the 
front  lines,  that  the  number  of  men  remaining  for  the 
communion  service  after  church-parade  was  commonly 
not  more  than  from  2  to  5  per  cent  of  the  total  number 
present.  And  this  characteristically  frank  confession  was 
made  by  an  officer :  'When  I  was  in  the  trenches  I  prayed 
like  a  good  one;  but  a  week  later,  when  I  was  back  in 
the  billets,  I  didn't  care  a  damn  for  religion.' 

Granted  that  this  emergency  religion  of  the  front  lines 
was  in  the  main  an  occasional  and  temporary  thing,  what 
have  we  as  a  result  of  it  ? 

There  are  unquestionably  some  few  men  returning 
with  a  confirmed  belief  that  by  prayer  they  were  spared 
from  death  and  were  the  objects  of  a  special  divine  pro- 
tection. Sherwood  Eddy  gives  a  typical  account  of  such 
an  experience  as  told  him  by  a  soldier : 

"No  sooner  had  I  done  this  than  Fritz  started  to  bom- 
bard. One  shell  fell  in  the  hole  in  which  I  was,  but  ex- 
ploded in  the  opposite  direction.   Then  another  came  and 

"  Douglas  C.  Macintosh  in  "God  in  a  World  at  War." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  81 


landed  just  above  my  head,  but  it  failed  to  go  off.  Had 
it  gone  off  I  never  would  have  been  here  now.  I  had 
prayed  hard  to  God  to  deliver  me  from  my  enemies  and 
when  these  things  happened  J  felt  my  prayer  was  heard 
and  that  I  was  going  to  come  through. "^^ 

A  writer  in  The  Standard  gives  a  similar  case  as  de- 
scribed by  a  soldier : 

"There  were  hardly  ten  minutes  of  the  day  that  the 
Huns  weren't  shelling,  the  shrapnel  and  leaves  falling  like 
rain  around  our  heads;  we  had  no  protection  whatever, 
had  to  dig  a  little  hole  of  any  kind  just  for  the  present 
to  make  a  little  shelter  from  the  shell  fire,  and  believe  me, 
it  was  right  there  in  one  of  these  shell  holes  that  I  found 
my  God,  and  I  know  that  if  I  hadn't  found  him  I  would 
not  be  writing  this  to  you  now,  but  he  watched  over  me 
and  I  didn't  get  even  so  much  as  a  scratch. 

And  a  chaplain  tells  of  six  men  who  sought  refuge  in  a 
shell  hole: 

"For  nearly  an  hour  these  men  were  held  in  this  place 
and  were  praying  that  God  would  spare  their  lives.  Not 
a  man  was  injured." 

The  man  who  prayed  and  was  not  hit  has  come  back  to 
give  his  testimony.  The  man  who  prayed  and  was  hit  is 
not  here  to  tell  his  tale.  But  his  comrades  will  tell 
it  for  him.  We  do  not  happen  to  have  the  American 
equivalents  but  the  British  chaplains  were  frequently 
faced  with  the  case  of  "Bill  who  did  pray"  but  yet  had 
"his  head  blown  off."  A.  H.  Gray  was  reminded  of  the 
case  of  "Bob,  the  best  man  in  our  platoon,  a  man  who  said 
his  prayers  night  and  morning,  a  real  Christian  if  ever 
there  was  one,  and  he  was  held  up  in  the  German  wire 
and  fairly  riddled  with  bullets."  And  the  chaplain's  com- 
ment follows: 

"To  teach  a  man  that  God  will  be  with  him  even  in 
the  hour  of  death,  and  that  beyond  death  there  is  nothing 
to  fear,  is  to  give  him  a  faith  adequate  to  the  terror  of 

Sherwood  Eddy,  "With  Our  Soldiers  in  France." 
»  F.  E.  R.  Miller,  in  The  Standard. 


82     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 

life  at  the  front.  But  to  leave  him  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment belief  in  the  material  salvation  of  the  godly  man  is 
simply  to  mislead  him  and  prepare  him  for  real  trouble."" 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  a  very  few  who  have  returned 
with  any  such  faith  as  this.  Time  and  the  harsh  impar- 
tial experiences  of  war  were  against  it.  The  best  men  of 
all  ranks  would  have  little  to  do  with  it.  The  thing  to  be 
feared  is  that  some  of  these  best  men,  witnessing  it,  have 
been  confirmed  in  their  opinion  that  Christianity  is  a 
religion  of  fear  or  selfishness. 

It  is  not  unreasonable  to  expect  that  some  few  men 
have  returned  with  the  vivid  memory  of  times  when  the 
entire  dependence  of  man  on  a  power  greater  than  man, 
the  need  and  possibility  of  the  companionship  of  God, 
and  the  care  of  One  who  knoweth  even  the  sparrows 
when  they  fall,  was  keenly  felt.  The  experiences  may 
have  been  bound  up  with  much  that  is  crude  and  on  the 
level  with  "natural"  religion.  But  Professor  Hocking's 
comment  is  worth  recalling: 

"An  idea  is  not  necessarily  false  because  it  is  primitive. 
To  discover  for  one's  self  whatever  truth  there  is  in  the 
simpler  phases  of  religion  may  be  the  best  way  to  revital- 
ize more  adequate  forms  more  conventionally  held."^* 

THE  QUESTION  OF  GOD'S  PROVIDENCE 

The  problems  connected  with  a  Christian  belief  in 
God's  providence  have  not  been  created  but  they  have 
been  very  widely  distributed  by  the  experiences  of  war. 

"We  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  imagine  that  our 
experiences  of  these  past  three  years  have  created  any 
new  difficulty  for  Christianity.  They  have  only  diffused 
the  knowledge  of  their  existence  and  have  given  edge  and 
point  to  them  all."^^ 

"Many  men  say  that  they  don't  see  how  an  all-wise 
and  all-powerful  God  could  allow  this  war." 

"The  problem  of  evil  is  the  one  big  intellectual  difficulty 

21  A.  H.  Gray,  "As  Tommy  Sees  Us." 

^  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War -Time." 

«>  Ihid. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  83 


in  men's  minds.  They  are  face  to  face  with  it  all  the 
time." 

This  situation  must  cause  deep  thoughtfulness  and' 
humility  in  the  preachers  of  religion.  In  the  days  ahead 
many  of  their  hearers  will  be  men  who  have  met  the 
hardest  facts  of  life — the  extremes  of  suffering  and 
malice,  the  pain  of  the  innocent,  the  death  of  the  faithful. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  for  many  years  to  come  the  problem 
of  evil  will  be  before  us  in  a  much  sharper  form  than 
before  the  war.  If  the  view  of  life  we  preach  cannot 
meet  the  facts  of  human  suffering  it  will  be  condemned 
without  pity  or  delay.^* 

THE  PREVALENCE  OF  FATALISM 

It  is  generally  acknowledged  that  some  sort  of  fatal- 
ism was  prevalent  under  combat  conditions.  The 
question  is  as  to  what  sort  it  was  and  as  to  its  religious 
significance.  There  are  fairly  distinct  levels  of  fatalism 
or  what  might  loosely  be  called  fatalism.  Men  may 
discover  very  early  that  "there's  no  use  of  worrying," 
that  it  weakens  and  does  not  save.  It  is  not  credible  for 
long  at  the  front  that  a  man  can  do  much  by  prayer  or 
otherwise  to  ward  off  wounds  or  death.  His  chances  of 
life  or  death  do  not  depend  on  him  at  any  rate.  The 
way  to  inner  peace  is  to  "take  no  thought  for  your  life." 
When  men  go  on  from  this  to  decide  what  does  control 
the  chances  the  answers  may  differ.  Luck,  Destiny, 
God.  The  vaguest  and  most  noncommittal  answer  is, 
Luck.  "If  your  luck's  in,  it's  in;  if  it's  out,  it's  out." 
The  result  becomes  a  matter  of  chances  or  is  subject  to 
a  vague  personal  possession  that  a  man  may  "have  with 
him"  or  be  "out  of."  In  any  case  one  would  not  rest  very 
heavily  upon  it.    It  is  quite  an  advance  from  this  stage 

Cf.  the  British  Report,  "The  Army  and  Religion":  "The  brute  facts 
which  have  wrought  such  confusion  in  the  minds  of  the  soldiers  have  come 
also  with  rude  hands  into  the  sanctuaries  of  their  kindred.  It  has  become 
evident  that  the  faith  which  will  command  the  future  will  be  that  which 
deals  most  adequately  with  the  problem  of  evil." 


84     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


to  a  developed  fatalism,  wherein  the  cards  are  all  stacked, 
the  results  all  foreordained,  whether  by  Fate  or  God. 
Then  men  begin  to  say:  "I'm  not  for  it  till  one  comes 
along  with  my  number  on  it."  Such  fatalism  is  religious 
or  not  according  as  to  whether  the  number  is  put  on  by 
God  or  Fate.  In  either  case,  if  thoroughly  believed,  it 
will  tend  to  make  men  reckless. 

It  is  not  possible  to  tell  from  the  reports  of  chaplains 
just  what  the  so-called  fatalism  in  the  American  army 
amounted  to.  In  the  British  army  there  appears  to  have 
been  a  good  deal  of  the  thoroughgoing  sort.  We  are 
inclined  to  believe  that  in  our  own  army,  perhaps  be- 
cause of  the  shorter  time  of  service,  most  men  did  not 
get  far  beyond  the  Luck  stage.  At  least  there  is  little 
evidence  that  men  attained  a  fatalism  which  would  cast 
all  care  or  caution  aside. 

As  to  its  religious  significance  men  differ.  One  says : 
"In  my  opinion  the  common  fatalism  of  the  soldiers  is  the 
logical  outgrowth  of  the  teachings  of  the  Church.  War 
has  emphasized  man's  weakness,  the  frailty  of  life,  the 
certainty  of  death,  and  the  dependence  of  the  individual 
on  God."  But  another  asserts:  "The  fatalism  of  the 
soldier  is,  of  course,  not  Christian  at  all.  It  is  a  pagan 
survival."  The  probabilities  are  that  a  fatalism  as 
fluid  as  that  in  the  army  tended  to  take  its  color  from  the 
previous  beliefs  of  the  individual,  being  reHgious  or  not 
according  as  the  man  was  religious  or  not. 

There  is  no  reason  to  expect  that  it  will  survive  the 
war  to  any  marked  degree.  It  was  mainly  associated 
with  battle  wounds  and  death.  It  was  relatively  super- 
ficial, "a  spiritual  sedative,"  an  attitude  adopted  as  a 
protection  against  fear  or  anxiety. 

INCREASED  FAITH  IN  IMMORTALITY 
It  was  entirely  natural  that  war  should  bring  to  the 
men  in  the  army  a  renewed  interest  in  immortality. 
"Day  by  day  there  was  held  before  them  that  oldest  of 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  85 


the  world's  old  questions:  If  a  man  die  shall  he  live 
again?"  Such  an  added  interest  is  reported.  A  lieu- 
tenant writes,  "Here  [in  the  Zone  of  Advance]  men  con- 
fess to  a  new  sense  of  reality  in  things  religious,  saying  it 
was  the  first  appreciation  they  had  for  'life  after  death.'  " 
An  enlisted  man  reports,  "Under  stress  of  physical 
danger  I  would  notice  a  distinct  reaction  towards  prayer 
and  a  desire  to  believe  in  eternal  life."  A  chaplain  says, 
"My  impression  is  that  there  has  been  a  great  renewing 
of  belief  in  immortality." 

Under  the  stimulus  of  this  added  interest  the  faith  in 
immortality,  already  latent  in  so  many  men,  became 
temporarily  at  least  more  conscious  and  strong.  This 
renewed  faith  was  not  the  product  of  reasoning,  nor  was 
it  largely  connected  in  men's  minds  with  Christian  evi- 
dence. It  was  an  instinctive  assertion  of  human  nature 
in  the  face  of  war's  disaster. 

"Spontaneously  the  feeling  arises  as  one  views  the 
broken  and  mangled  bodies  of  the  dead  and  dying  and  the 
row  upon  row  of  wooden  crosses  that  mark  the  graves 
of  the  dead,  'Of  course,  there  must  be  life  beyond;  this 
surely  is  not  the  end  of  all.'  " 

"Men  might  think  that  they  themselves  should  pass  into 
nothingness,  but  they  do  not  believe  it  possible  that  such 
a  fate  has  pursued  those  whom  they  have  loved  and  lost 
awhile  on  the  battlefield." 

"They  discovered  a  great  natural  conviction  not  rea- 
soned but  instinctive,  the  conviction  of  the  certainty  of 
a  future  life.  The  poor  clay,  about  to  be  wrapped  in  its 
black  blanket,  was  'not  him.'  He  was  elsewhere  but  he 
was  still  alive.  Thus  the  violent  storms  and  tensions  of 
war  had  cleared  the  air  and  revealed  to  men  their  intui- 
tive knowledge  of  immortality  in  the  form  of  an  intense 
and  definite  personal  assurance."'^ 

The  following  excerpt  from  a  letter  of  a  young  officer, 
of  the  class  of  1918  of  Yale,  to  his  mother,  is  illustrative 
of  the  instinctive  confidence  in  a  future  life  held  by  men 
at  the  front : 

"  John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching." 


86     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


"If  I  must  make  the  supreme  sacrifice  ....  the  Hfe 
that  I  lay  down  will  be  my  preparation  for  the  grander, 
finer  life  that  I  shall  take  up.  I  shall  live!  And  I  shall 
be  nearer  to  you  than  I  am  now  or  ever  have  been." 

Some  have  found  considerable  significance  in  the 
phrases  or  words  commonly  used  by  soldiers  in  speaking 
of  death.  Thus  Dr.  George  C.  Stewart  of  Chicago  says : 
"There  are  two  expressions  used  by  the  soldiers  for 
death,  and  they  reflect  two  attitudes:  one  distinctly  re- 
ligious and  the  other  skeptical  or  agnostic.  I  am  glad 
to  say  that  the  religious  phrase  is  the  one  most  commonly 
used.  The  skeptical  expression  is  'napoo'  (corruption 
of  il  n'y  en  a  plus)  and  the  religious  expression  is  'gone 
west.'  It  is  doubtful  whether  these  common  expressions 
can  be  made  to  carry  a  large  burden  of  interpretation. 
In  part  they  represent  that  same  diffidence  in  speaking 
of  death  that  is  common  in  civil  life.  Compare,  'If 
anything  should  happen  to  me.'  'When  I  am  gone.' 
In  part  they  express  the  vagueness  of  men's  conception 
of  immortality." 

There  is  no  evidence  that  the  general  belief  in  immor- 
tality encouraged  by  the  war  was  connected  with  the 
traditional  Christian  imagery  of  Judgment,  Heaven  and 
Hell,  at  least  so  far  as  Protestants  are  concerned.  It  had 
little  content;  was  not  associated  closely  with  any  idea 
of  salvation ;  was  optimistic,  without  much  thought  of 
moral  judgment  or  sharp  alternatives.^* 

A  number  of  chaplains  have  thought  it  necessary  to 
combat  the  idea  that  death  in  battle  saves.  Sherwood 
Eddy  says  that  the  idea  was  "widely  preached  by  many 
British  chaplains."  Norman  MacLean  reports  that  he 
found  the  idea  occasionally  amongst  British  soldiers. 
We  have  no  evidence  at  hand  that  the  belief  was  often 

"  The  following  is  interesting  as  indicating  one  of  the  effects  of  the  war 
on  a  chaplain'3  views.  "Can  we  conceive  the  soldier  hurled  from  the  hell 
of  battle  into  an  endless  hell?  ....  It  is  equally  inconceivable  that  lives 
so  stained  and  maired  can  'immediately  pass  into  glory.'  ....  The  Church 
must  find  a  third  category.  It  must  propound  not  only  a  doctrine  of  heaven 
and  hell,  but  also  a  doctrine  of  an  intermediate  state."  MacLean  and 
Sclater. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  87 


preached  or  found  in  the  American  army.  It  was  cer- 
tainly not  prevalent. 

Dr.  Kelman  summarizes  the  situation  as  regards  the 
belief  in  immortality  as  follows :  "The  belief  in  a  future 
life  has  disclosed  itself  at  the  seat  of  war  as  a  funda- 
mental element  in  human  nature,  an  instinctive  convic- 
tion of  the  soul  of  man.  But  that  is  obviously  not  enough. 
When  the  trials  which  disclosed  it  are  over,  men  will 
forget,  and  lose  it  among  the  absorbing  interests  of  the 
world.  To  really  grasp  and  hold  it,  so  that  it  will  master 
us  amid  the  passing  show  of  life,  we  must  enter  the 
larger  world  of  the  spiritual  and  get  in  among  the  powers 
of  the  eternal  life." 

APPRECIATION  OF  THE  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS 

In  war  men  have  had  experiences  which  make  certain 
Christian  ideas  more  intelligible  and  real  to  them — such 
as  Sacrifice,  Sharing,  Burden-bearing,  Fellowship,  the 
Cross  and  Atonement.  On  the  level  of  human  relations 
all  of  these  become  the  personal  experience  of  many  men 
— in  the  risking  of  hfe  for  one  another,  in  the  close 
fellowship  and  sharing  of  the  more  intense  moments,  in 
the  bearing  of  the  burdens  and  disloyalties  of  the  unfit  by 
the  fit,  in  the  willing  sacrifice  of  self  for  the  furtherance 
of  the  cause.  A  common  ground  between  the  preacher 
of  Christianity  and  many  hearers  has  been  furnished, 
which  has  been  taken  advantage  of  during  the  war  and 
may  be  taken  advantage  of  for  some  time  to  come. 

"Men  are  actually  finding  out  what  it  means  to  suffer 
for  others  or  to  have  others  suffer  and  die  for  them.  It 
is  not  difficult  now  to  make  them  see  the  significance  of 
the  Christian  teaching  of  vicarious  sacrifice  and  atone- 
ment." 

"I  do  not  think  that  the  service  rendered  and  the  sacri- 
fice made  have  in  most  cases  been  connected  in  the  minds 
of  the  men  with  Christianity.  But  the  two  are  so  alike 
that  they  will  easily  be  led  from  one  to  the  other." 

"We  must  remember  that  the  preaching  of  the  Cross 


88     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


has  suffered  from  lack  of  experience  in  the  hearers  as 
well  as  from  lack  of  passion  in  those  who  preached.  It 
has  left  them  cold  because  they  did  not  know  by  experi- 
ence anything  of  what  it  meant.  Now  they  are  in  a  posi- 
tion to  understand  better  what  Christ  did  because  of 
what  they  themselves  have  been  doing. 

"To  many  young  men  in  ordinary  times  life  is  prac- 
tically without  sacrifice.  In  the  absence  of  any  clear  call 
for  it,  they  take  the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  the  nat- 
ural love  of  comfort  and  pleasure  is  the  predominant 
motive  of  their  daily  lives.  With  the  call  to  arms  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  such  young  men,  neither  more  nor 
less  selfish  than  their  neighbors,  suddenly  chose  and 
accepted  a  life  of  supreme  and  daily  self-sacrifice."^^ 

"Certain  facts  are  made  plain.  Chiefly  that  evil  com- 
mitted in  this  world  must  be  paid  for  The  sol- 
diers have  discovered  the  fact  and  continually  with 
startling  cheerfulness  assent  to  it,  that  we  are  bound  up 
in  the  bundle  of  life;  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the 
solidarity  of  the  race ;  that  God  acts  on  the  assumption 
that  the  human  race  is  a  family. 

"In  this  war  there  is  nothing  plainer  than  that  the  bur- 
dens are  unequally  distributed  and  that  it  is  in  the  nature 
of  things  that  such  inequality  must  continue.  Some  are 
fit  to  carry  the  burden  and  pay  the  debt  and  some  are 
not."28 

The  obvious  dangers  in  approaching  Christianity 
through  the  experiences  of  the  soldier  are  that  too  great 
emphasis  be  placed  on  the  mere  fact  of  suffering  regard- 
less of  the  character  and  spirit  of  the  person  who  suffers, 
that  the  Cross  of  Christ  be  reduced  to  the  meaning  of  "a 
man  laying  down  his  life  for  his  friends,"  that  religion 
be  identified  with  patriotism,  and  loyalty  to  the  nation 
with  loyalty  to  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

INTEREST  IN  THE  BIBLE 
From  the  first  day  when  America  went  to  war  to  the 
last  day  of  1918,  4,558,871  volumes  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures were  supplied  to  soldiers  and  sailors  by  the  Ameri- 


"  John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching." 
MacLean  and  Sclater,  "God  and  the  Soldier." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  89 


can  Bible  Society  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Even  allowing 
for  duplication  and  loss  this  represents  a  tremendous  dis- 
tribution of  the  Bible  or  portions  of  it  among  the  men  in 
service.  Millions  of  men  must  have  received  them.  We 
do  not  know  how  many  kept  and  carried  them,  but  the 
number  was  very  great.  A  divisional  chaplain  writes: 
"During  the  first  two  weeks'  fighting  in  the  Argonne,  my 
chaplains  buried  between  fourteen  hundred  and  fifteen 
hundred  dead.  The  personal  eflfects  came  through  my 
hands.  I  did  not  count  them.  But  I  venture  to  say  that 
in  90  per  cent  of  the  personal  effects  of  these  dead 
soldiers  there  was  a  Bible  or  a  prayer  book,  a  crucifix 
or  a  scapular,  or  some  indication  that  religion  was  an 
element  in  that  man's  life."^'  An  officer  says:  "I  have 
assisted  in  the  burial  of  many  American  dead  on  the 
battlefields  of  France,  and  almost  without  exception  we 
found  a  pocket  Testament  among  the  effects  carried  on 
the  persons  of  the  men." 

There  was  a  very  great  increase  in  Bible  carrying. 

Was  there  the  same  increase  in  Bible  reading?  Cer- 
tainly not  to  anywhere  near  the  same  extent.  "Thou- 
sands carried  Testaments  and  seldom  read  them." 
"Although  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Bibles  have  been 
handed  out,  they  have  not  been  noticeably  used  except 
during  passage  through  the  U  boat  zone  and  on  the 
fringes  of  No  Man's  Land."  Many  men  figuratively 
transferred  the  Bible  from  the  top  shelf  to  the  blouse 
pocket.  It  was  comforting  to  have  there  as  a  symbol  of 
religion  and  a  suggestion  of  home  piety.  It  was  some- 
how a  good  thing  to  have  along. 

"I  found  that  the  carrying  of  Testaments  brought 
comfort,  as  though  there  were  some  efficacy  in  merely 
having  possession  of  such.    To  Protestant  boys  they 

*•  "I  had  to  search  the  dead  bodies  for  their  little  possessions.  The  doc- 
tor and  I  were  amazed  to  find  that  nearly  every  man  had  a  Bible  or  cross 
on  him.  'They  do  seem  religious,' — he  said, — 'these  boys;  I  should  never 
have  thought  they  would  have  such  things.'  Perhaps  they  carried  them  as 
a  charm — a  sort  of  magic,  perhaps  because  they  felt  more  than  they  know 
that  'such  things'  contained  the  secret  of  life  and  death  and  immortality, 
perhaps  because  they  had  a  deep  love  for  them.  None  can  say."  Maurice 
Ponsonby. 


90     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


served  as  'amulets.'  My  experience  was  that  they  were 
read  very  Httle  except  under  stress  of  fear  or  excitement." 

"My  work  has  all  been  in  the  hospitals  and  for  the  most 
part  with  wounded  or  convalescent  men.  I  do  not  recall 
ever  seeing  a  boy  reading  his  Bible  or  even  having  one. 
But  their  personal  effects  were  of  necessity  reduced  to  the 
minimum." 

But  there  is  much  testimony  to  the  effect  that  these 
Bibles  and  Testaments  were  read  or  "read  at"  by  many 
men,  probably  by  many  who  had  never  looked  into  them 
before.  Three  hospital  chaplains  in  different  locations 
report  as  follows : 

"You  can  see  patients  propped  up  in  bed,  reading  their 
Testaments,  wherever  you  go." 

"Prayer  books  and  Testaments  were  very  popular  and 
were  read,  especially  the  latter." 

"Testament  and  Bible  reading  is  common  among  the 
bed  patients." 

"I  am  surprised  at  the  number  of  men  whom  I  find  in 
the  barracks,  reading  their  Testaments  at  night.  Several 
times  I  have  seen  them  reading  their  Testaments  at  the 
rest  period  in  drill."    (An  enlisted  man.) 

It  is  very  difficult  to  estimate  the  significance  or  re- 
sults of  this.  Doubtless  some  men  read  with  a  vague 
notion  that  it  was  a  meritorious  thing  to  do.  For  some 
it  was  one  of  the  expressions  of  emergency  religion — one 
of  the  accepted  practices  of  religion  to  which  men  blindly 
turned  for  inward  peace  or  outward  security.  Chaplains 
do  not  seem  to  know  what  men  looked  for  in  the  Bible 
principally  or  what  they  found  there.  In  summary,  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  very  many  men  have  carried  Bibles  or 
Testaments  who  never  did  before.  This  may  have  in- 
creased their  sentiment  in  regard  to  it  and  their  curiosity 
as  to  its  contents.  It  is  probable  that  many  men,  on 
occasions  at  least,  read  the  Scriptures  for  the  first  time 
in  many  years.   With  what  results  we  do  not  know.'^ 


""The  following  judgment  by  a  divisional  chaplain  is  of  interest:  "Only 
in  exceptional  cases  and  under  the  guidance  of  strong  personalities  have 
Bible  classes  and  discussion  groups  proved  popular  and  enduring." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  PERSONAL  RELIGION  91 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  REALITY 
One  of  the  things  which  chaplains  speak  of  very  com- 
monly is  an  increased  demand  for  reality  which  they  be- 
lieve to  be  characteristic  of  many  men  who  have  been 
to  war.  They  say  that  "the  soldier  has  seen  the  real 
values  of  life,"  that  "when  men  faced  death  cant  and 
hypocrisy  of  every  sort  were  sloughed  off,"  that  "Chris- 
tian teachers  will  be  put  on  their  mettle  in  days  to  come 
by  men  who  will  want  plain  English  on  fundamental 
matters."  Certainly  war  carried  men  out  into  the 
borders  of  life  where  they  met  the  "harder"  facts  of  pain 
and  death  and  the  physical  impact  of  man  with  man — 
the  things  we  ordinarily  avoid  or  cover  or  delegate  to 
police  and  hangmen.  They  were  threatened  with  the 
loss  of  all  they  had  and  may  well  have  decided  which 
was  more  worth  trying  to  save — skin  and  pleasure,  or 
soul.  Some  of  the  most  elementary  and  deepgoing  of 
human  emotions  were  stirred.  Perhaps  the  finest  quality 
that  some  men  won  through  to  was  something  called 
"reality" — an  absence  of  pretense,  a  steadiness,  and  readi- 
ness to  meet  eye  to  eye  anj-thing  life  may  bring.  It  is 
such  a  quality  which  some  have  read  in  the  faces  of 
returning  men.  It  is  said  that  they  will  demand  it  with 
new  emphasis  of  the  preachers  and  representatives  of 
religion.  "If  war  itself  has  not  supplied  him  (the 
soldier)  with  revelation  in  large  measure,  it  may  yet  have 
endowed  him  with  a  great  hunger  and  a  direct  undeceiv- 
able  eye  for  judging  the  world  of  ideas  to  which  he 
returns.  Already  one  is  aware  of  a  keen  wind  astir 
seeming  to  bring  with  it  a  demand  for  substance  in  place 
of  husks,  for  contemporaneous  insight  instead  of  mere 
inheritance,  which  may  well  warn  all  doctors  of  religion 
that  a  time  of  reckoning  is  at  hand."^^ 

As  to  what  "the  real  values  of  life"  or  "the  funda- 
mental matters"  are,  men  are  bound  to  differ.  And 
"reality"  is  not  one  of  the  easiest  words  to  define.  But 


°W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 


92      RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


when  men  seek  to  interpret  it  in  connection  with  the  new 
demand  made  upon  the  presentation  of  reHgion  they 
usually  speak  of  such  things  as  applicability,  contempora- 
neousness, literalness,  concreteness,  intelligibility. 

The  following  are  typical  expressions  of  this  demand 
as  expressed  or  interpreted  by  chaplains  and  others. 

"The  war's  principal  effect  upon  religion  has  been  the 
demand  for  applicability.  This  has  brought  about  a 
revelation  of  the  chasm  now  existing  between  the  average 
man  and  the  institutions  and  doctrines  of  Christianity. 
They  are  to  him  unreal." 

"In  my  judgment  the  soldier  will  return  with  a  demand 
both  for  a  deeper  interpretation  of  spiritual  things  and  a 
more  simple  application  in  practical  life  of  the  truths  of 
the  faith."*2 

"They  live  in  the  present  world.  No  argument  based 
on  the  customs  of  the  earliest  century  will  reach  them. 
Which  church  is  doing  the  work  today  ?" 

"They  do  not  care  much  whether  God  created  the  world 
in  six  days  or  16,000  years,  or  whether  the  church  came 
into  existence  on  Whitsunday." 

"The  revision  now  needed  is  in  the  interest  of  making 
as  much  as  possible  as  intelligible  as  possible."^ 

"The  secret  of  reality  in  preaching  is  intelligibility,  and 
the  secret  of  intelligibility  is  interest.  'Interest,'  'inter- 
esting' are  to  be  understood  in  their  etymological  sense — 
interest — that  which  is  common  to  speaker  and  hearer, 
that  which  they  have  between  them."^* 

"All  that  consists  in  empty  formulas,  beautiful  as  they 
may  be,  powerfully  as  they  may  have  contributed  to 
nourish  souls;  all  the  formulas  which  are  today  empty 
because  our  philosophic  or  religious  thought,  our  experi- 
ences or  our  conception  of  life  have  outgrown  them  or 
caused  them  to  burst  their  frames — all  such  formulas 
must  disappear."^^ 

'2  Edgar  DeWitt  Jones,  in  The  Christian  Century. 

^  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time, "  Atlantic  Monthly. 

John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching." 

Alfred  Eugene  Casalis,  "For  France  and  the  Faith." 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  EFFECT  ON  THE  CHURCHES  AND 
CHURCHMANSHIP 

In  Part  I  of  this  volume  we  have  discussed  the  attitude  of  the 
men  in  the  army  toward  the  Churches  and  have  considered 
certain  criticisms  of  the  Churches  frequently  expressed.  In  the 
present  chapter  we  shall  consider  how  these  attitudes  which  the 
men  brought  into  the  army  have  been  modified  by  their  military 
experience. 

CHURCH  UNITY  AND  COOPERATION 
The  most  distinct  and  important  of  the  immediate 
effects  of  army  Hfe  and  war  on  the  Churches  and  church- 
manship  were  in  the  Hne  of  church  cooperation  or  unity. 
We  have  already  spoken  in  Part  I  of  the  very  considerable 
indifference  to  denominational  lines  shown  by  men  in 
the  army.  Unquestionably  the  situation  encouraged  and 
developed  this  indifference.  Only  three  simple  religious 
divisions  were  officially  recognized — Catholic,  Protes- 
tant, Jewish.  Welfare  agencies  in  the  main  representa- 
tive of  these  three  divisions  were  recognized.  And  some 
effort  was  made  to  assign  chaplains  in  accordance  with 
the  predominance  or  proportion  of  these  elements  in  a 
given  unit.  But  the  divisions  of  Protestantism  were  given 
no  recognition  or  encouragement  beyond  that  received 
in  the  proportional  appointment  of  chaplains  and  the  ad- 
mission of  denominational  "camp  pastors"  to  the  home 
camps.  Under  these  conditions  it  was  natural  that  men 
already  disposed  to  make  little  of  religious  differences 
should  make  even  less  of  them  in  the  army. 

"Denominational  lines,  so  far  as  their  lives  in  the  army 
go,  have  practically  disappeared." 


94     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


"There  was  no  room  for  sectarianism  in  the  army." 

"We  have  all  but  forgotten  our  denominational  affilia- 
tions over  here,  and  the  more  we  have  forgotten  them  the 
better  it  has  been." 

"No  one  here  thinks  of  asking  for  a  Presbyterian  or 
a  Methodist  or  a  Baptist  chaplain.  If  he  comes  in  the 
spirit  of  Christ  it  is  enough." 

It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  army  life  developed  and  en- 
couraged a  prevailing  indifference  to  denominationalism. 
It  is  another  to  say  that  it  gave  any  large  number  of  men 
an  experience  of  church  unity.  Men  of  many  denomina- 
tions of  course  met  together  at  religious  meetings,  even 
at  the  sacrament. 

"With  reference  to  church  unity,  the  men  in  the  army 
united.  Catholics  and  Baptists  and  Presbyterians  and 
Southern  Methodists,  Jews,  and  even  the  one  Mormon 
and  the  two  Mohammedans  in  our  regiment  came  to  hear 
me  preach.  The  question  of  denomination  was  never 
raised." 

"In  our  regiment  at  were  Baptists,  Methodists, 

Catholics,  Presbj^terians,  agnostics,  Universalists,  and 
others.  We  all  worked,  played,  and  worshipped  together 
with  never  a  word  against  any  religious  belief." 

Was  this  church  unity?  We  question  whether  it  was. 
The  "binder"  in  this  union  was  principally  comradeship 
in  arms,  not  fellowship  in  a  common  faith.  We  are 
incHned  to  believe  that  such  a  sense  of  fellowship,  of 
organic  life  in  the  Church,  what  has  been  referred  to  as 
the  "all-one-body"  feeling,  is  relatively  scarce  in  Protes- 
tantism. The  comradeship  of  the  army  entered  in  as  a 
substitute  for  this  and  united  men  of  many  affiliations 
and  many  faiths  in  a  half  religious,  half  military  fellow- 
ship. 

This  does  not  mean  that  this  experience  has  no  sig- 
nificance for  the  cause  of  church  unity.  It  is  a  short  step 
from  one  to  the  other.  And  men,  having  tasted  one,  may 
well  have  more  understanding  and  desire  for  the  other. 

More  important  than  the  mingling  of  men  from  vari- 
ous church  bodies  and  from  none  was  the  development  of 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  95 


cooperation  and  fellowship  among  the  chaplains  in  the 
army.  This  too  was,  of  course,  greatly  influenced  by  the 
practical  necessities  of  the  situation  as  well  as  by  the 
spirit  of  "the  service,"  but  it  resulted  in  a  real  religious 
unity  and  cooperation.  Chaplain  Brent  says :  "The  most 
striking  thing  in  connection  with  our  chaplains'  organiza- 
tion has  been  the  loyalty  of  the  chaplains  to  one  another 
and  to  our  office.  At  the  beginning  of  our  organization 
it  was  agreed  as  a  principle  of  the  office  that  there  were 
to  be  no  official  secrets,  but  that  every  problem  or  letter 
concerning  our  chaplains  which  came  to  the  office  should 
be  the  property  and  the  responsibility  of  all.  We  were  to 
respect  the  convictions  of  others  as  our  own,  and  to 
minister  to  the  needs  of  others  irrespective  of  their  reli- 
gious affiliations  as  though  they  were  our  own  men. 
Not  only  have  these  principles  been  carried  out  in  the 
G.  H.  Q.  Chaplains'  Office,  so  that  there  have  never  been 
any  serious  shadows  or  difficulty  among  ourselves,  but  it 
has  also  been  the  motive  power  always  of  the  chaplains' 
organization  throughout  the  army.  The  brotherhood 
which  has  sprung  up  is  a  living  force."*' 

Bishop  Perry,  who,  as  chief  of  the  Chaplains'  Bureau 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  was  at  the  head  of  a  force  of 
seventy-six  Red  Cross  chaplains,  representing  sixteen 
different  denominations,  has  written  of  them :  "A  singu- 
lar fellowship  unites  them,  prophetic  of  a  unity  that  must 
survive  the  war  if  the  capacity  for  real  religion  has  been 
accurately  gauged.  Without  surrendering  their  own  con- 
victions or  descending  to  the  common  ground  of  compro- 
mise, these  representatives  of  every  church,  Roman, 
Anglican,  and  Protestant,  have  learned  to  work  side  by 
side,  understanding  and  respecting  one  another's  posi- 
tions."" 

This  cooperation  took  the  form  of  conference  and 
common  preparation  at  the  chaplains'  schools,  the  sharing 


"*  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General. 
"Article  in  The  Living  Church. 


96     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


of  information  and  plans,  the  securing  of  religious  minis- 
trations for  men  of  other  faiths  than  their  own,  and 
administrative  unity  in  the  A.  E.  F.  and  its  divisional 
organizations. 

It  went  beyond  this  in  the  form  of  direct  ministrations 
to  the  members  of  various  religious  bodies.  Within 
Protestantism  there  has  been  very  considerable  coopera- 
tion and  interchange  in  the  matter  of  baptism  and  initia- 
tion into  membership. 

"Men  of  all  denominations  have  freely  welcomed  sol- 
diers into  the  church  of  their  choice  and  transferred  their 
membership  to  the  home  church.  Baptists  are  baptized 
by  sprinkling  when  it  is  impossible  to  immerse  them,  and 
the  Baptist  minister  participates  in  these  sacramental 
services.  Ministers  of  other  denominations  have  not 
hesitated  to  immerse  Baptists  when  there  has  been  time 
and  opportunity  to  do  so." 

"One  man  was  baptized  by  a  Methodist  minister  using 
the  Lutheran  form  of  baptism  with  two  Baptists  as  wit- 
nesses, and  the  service  was  performed  in  a  Presbyterian 

elder's  room  Not  one  of  the  participants  doubted 

the  efficacy  of  the  rite."^* 

"I  have  baptized  eight  and  received  men  into  churches 
as  follows :  Methodist  Episcopal,  South,  6 ;  Methodist 
Episcopal,  8;  Presbyterian,  3;  Congregationalist,  1." 

"I  have  received  into  the  Methodist  Church  three 
members.  I  have  had  a  special  service  for  them  here  in 
my  room,  and  received  them  for  their  own  pastors.  I 
have  received  into  the  Presbyterian  Church  one  member, 
two  into  the  Christian  Church,  one  into  the  Baptist 
Church,  and  one  into  the  Lutheran  Church."  (An 
Episcopalian.) 

This  type  of  mutual  ministration  did  not,  of  course, 
often  take  place  between  Protestants  and  Catholics,  but 
one  Protestant  reports :  "I  have  brought  to  their  priests 
for  baptism  six  and  gathered  together  a  class  of  twenty- 
five  to  whom  the  Roman  Catholic  Auxiliary  Bishop  of 
Chicago  came  out  and  administered  confirmation.  I  have 
brought  twenty-seven  others  who  had  not  been  to  their 


»  Edwin  A.  McAlpin,  Jr.,  in  The  Continent. 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  97 


confession  nor  made  their  communion  for  a  long  time 
back  to  these  duties." 

In  the  reHgious  ministry  to  the  sick,  the  cooperation  ex- 
tended beyond  the  Hmits  of  Protestantism  to  Roman 
Catholics  and  Jews. 

"I  was  the  only  chaplain  there  at  Orleans  and  minis- 
tered to  everybody  independently  of  church  affiliation. 
I  used  to  hear  confession  of  Roman  Catholic  soldiers  and 
give  them  the  sacrament.  I  was  accustomed  to  pray  by 
their  bedsides  as  well  as  at  the  bedside  of  every  sort  of 
Protestant  and  Jew." 

"I  remember  one  man  especially,  a  Jew,  who  was 
dying.  W^hen  I  asked  him  if  I  might  not  pray  with  him 
he  replied  at  once  that  he  was  of  Jewish  faith.  'That 
makes  no  difference,'  I  replied,  'we  have  the  same  God, 
our  Heavenly  Father,  and  my  Saviour  was  a  Jew.'  And 
then  I  prayed  as  we  both  could,  commending  his  spirit  to 
God's  care." 

The  following  are  typical  of  other  cases  of  generous 
cooperation  between  Roman  Catholics  and  Protestants: 

"Only  the  other  day  the  Roman  Catholic  chaplain  here 

offered  me  the  church  of  for  a  Protestant  burial. 

He  told  me  recently  that  he  would  be  perfectly  willing  to 
have  me  officiate  at  the  burial  of  his  people." 

"We  had  a  burial  of  a  boy  and  the  Roman  Catholic 
chaplain  had  a  boy  to  bury  at  the  same  time.  When  we 
were  ready  for  the  burial  I  thought  of  course  that  he 
would  want  to  go  through  his  service  separately  and 
asked  him  how  we  should  arrange  it.  He  answered  that 
it  would  be  all  right  for  me  to  read  the  service  and  he 
stood  beside  me  while  I  read  the  service  for  the  boys  of 
both  faiths." 

"In  my  last  letter  I  told  you  of  the  old  French  priest. 
....  Well,  he  asked  me  to  come  back  today — Sunday — 
to  the  high  mass  at  eight  o'clock.  I  rose  long  before 
daybreak,  had  breakfast  with  company  and  then  slipped 
into  the  old  church.  I  sat  halfway  up,  but  when  the  old 
priest  saw  me  he  left  the  altar  and  came  down  to  where 
I  sat  and  asked  me  to  come  forward.  I  declined  but  he 
insisted  and  he  escorted  me  up  inside  the  altar  rail  and 
set  me  in  the  Bishop's  chair  After  the  mass  the 


98     RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


priest  let  me  have  the  church  for  my  own  service,  .... 
the  whole  company  was  there,  ....  and  the  cure  gave 
each  boy  a  little  Catholic  medal."  (A  Baptist  chaplain 
overseas.) 

Another  chaplain  tells  of  conducting  a  funeral  in  a 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  with  the  priest  and  choir 
assisting. 

A  further  development  in  the  direction  of  unity  which 
took  place  in  the  army  was  the  increased  openness  of 
the  Communion^'  and  the  increased  interchange  in  its 
administration.  Within  Protestantism  the  Communion 
was  generally  open  to  Christians  of  every  name,  with  the 
exception,  in  some  cases,  of  the  Southern  Baptist  and 
Lutheran  communions.  Occasionally  Roman  priests  ad- 
ministered the  Communion  to  Protestants.  Roman 
Catholics  have  not  infrequently  received  the  Communion 
at  the  hands  of  Protestant  ministers. 

"I  invited  all  baptized  Christians  to  come  to  their 
Lord's  Table  and  Baptists  and  all  came."" 

"I  gave  the  Communion  to  Methodists,  Baptists,  Pres- 
byterians, Roman  Catholics,  and  Lutherans." 

"All  baptized  men  were  invited  to  the  Communion  and 
a  good  many  men  of  other  communions  came  regularly  to 
the  services." 

"In  the  field,  and  indeed  at  Camp  Upton,  I  have  more 
than  once  had  Catholics  take  Communion  at  my  hands." 

"Men  of  all  communions  were  at  these  services.  I 
forbade  none  who  came  seeking.  I  invited  all  in  the 
terms  of  the  invitation  itself,  leaving  it  to  the  men  to 
decide  whether  they  could  accept  the  terms." 

"On  Sundays  I  take  the  Communion  service.  I  invite 
all  Christians  to  come.  Presbyterians,  Methodists,  Bap- 
tists, and  occasionally  Roman  Catholics  are  glad  to  come." 

"Many  Protestants  received  the  Blessed  Sacrament  at 
my  hands  and  I  have  on  occasions  heard  the  confessions 

s»  "We  can  never  be  one- — we  can  never  in  any  deep  sense  know  the 
blessedness  of  Christian  charity — until  we  can  truly  meet  together  to  do 
what  the  Lord  Himself  bade  us  do  in  remembrance  of  Him."  MacLean  and 
Sclater,  "God  and  the  Soldier." 

'"The  following  quotations  on  this  topic  are  principally  from  Episco- 
palians, since  the  Episcopal  War  Commission  had  made  inquiries  on  the 
subject  among  a  number  of  their  chaplains,  and  the  replies  were  kindly  made 
accessible  to  this  Committee. 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP 


99 


of  Roman  Catholics  and  given  them  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment." 

"Chaplain  and  I  have  services  together,  .... 

with  a  celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion  on  the  first 
Sunday  of  the  month,  at  which  I  officiate,  a  Congrega- 
tional clerg)-man  assisting." 

It  is  impossible  to  say  with  much  confidence  what  the 
results  of  these  developments  and  experiences  are  or  will 
be.  Probably  they  have  increased  the  demand  for  church 
cooperation  or  unity  among  those  who  have  served  as 
chaplains.  A  large  proportion  of  the  chaplains  with 
whom  we  have  corresponded  speak  of  this  as  one  of  the 
things  they  desire  most  for  the  Church,  and  many  put 
it  in  the  forefront. 

"We  must  prepare  ourselves  for  church  cooperation. 
No  longer  will  the  name  of  a  church,  a  particular  church, 
have  any  challenge  in  it." 

"The  fundamental  trouble  when  you  face  the  three 
great  phases  of  church  activity.  Religious  Education, 
Social  Service,  and  Missions,  is  lack  of  unity.  We  can  do 
nothing  on  a  saving  scale  till  we  have  unity." 

"It  is  time  that  the  Church  put  a  stop  to  its  competition 
and  strife  among  denominations  and  applied  itself  defi- 
nitely and  unreservedly  to  ministering  to  the  deep  social 
and  religious  needs  of  mankind." 

"The  actual  experience  in  cooperative  activity  in  behalf 
of  the  great  army  task  has  created  a  very  strong  sentiment 
for  cooperation." 

"There  is  no  need  so  great  as  Christian  unity." 

To  what  extent  there  has  been  developed  an  increased 
interest  in  unity  on  the  part  of  laymen  in  the  army  is 
more  difficult  to  say.  A  conference  of  some  sixty-five  men 
held  in  a  "hut"  in  France  expressed  a  unanimous  desire 
to  unite  the  denominations.  An  officer  writes:  "The 
common  life  of  so  many  different  men  in  barracks,  on  the 
march,  in  the  hospital,  eating,  sleeping,  living,  fighting, 
suffering  together,  has  made  them  ask,  'Why  can't  we 
worship  together?  Why  do  we  have  all  the  different 
denominations?'    They  felt  this  confusion  before  they 


100    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


entered  the  army  and  the  common  life  of  close  fellow- 
ship they  have  shared  for  these  months  has  increased 
their  feeling."  On  the  other  hand  men  say  they  "have 
met  no  criticism  relative  to  impatience  with  sects  or 
denominational  dififerences  or  lines."  Certainly  it  is  not 
one  of  the  main  interests  of  the  returned  soldier.  As 
we  have  already  said  the  majority  of  returned  soldiers 
are  not  greatly  interested  in  the  Church,  whether  united 
or  divided. 

The  question  is  as  to  the  effect  on  the  men  within  the 
Churches.  This  at  least  can  be  said.  They  have  experi- 
enced a  cooperative,  non-competitive  ministry.  They 
have  worshipped  in  intense  moments  with  men  of  many 
afifiliations.  They  have  seen  a  tacit  recognition  of  the 
validity  of  "orders"  and  "sacraments"  other  than  those 
of  their  own  church  body.  It  would  be  very  strange  if 
these  experiences  had  left  no  mark. 

INTERRUPTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  HABITS 
There  was  a  general  interruption  of  habits  of  public 
and  private  worship  in  army  life.  This  was  the  case  in 
home  training  camps  and  to  an  even  greater  extent  in 
the  combat  areas.  The  necessary  rigidity  of  army  rou- 
tine made  attendance  at  regular  services  impossible  for 
many  men.  The  conditions  of  war  often  made  it  imprac- 
ticable to  have  services.  The  lack  of  privacy  militated 
against  private  devotions,  especially  any  outward  ex- 
pressions such  as  kneeling  or  Bible  reading. 

"The  routine  of  camp  life  breaks  up  most  old  habits 
good  and  bad.  Church  attendance  is  small.  Bible  classes 
are  very  small,  sometimes  to  the  vanishing  point." 

"At  the  front  in  my  experience  religious  work  was 
almost  out  of  the  question.  Large  groups  of  men  were 
always  risky.  You  never  could  tell  when  a  shell  might 
come  along.  Altogether  it  was  a  very  difficult  matter  to 
hold  services." 

"Men  who  had  gone  to  church  regularly  before  have 
gotten  out  of  the  habit  in  the  army." 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  101 


"Religious  habits  have  decreased  if  one  considers  the 
old  habits  of  going  to  church  or  religious  services,  the 
saying  of  stated  prayers,  and  other  outward  expressions." 

It  is  doubtful  whether  this  interruption  was  sufficiently 
extended  or  complete  to  affect  permanently  men  with  a 
living  church  connection.  At  most  it  probably  has  shaken 
loose  some  who  were  bound  to  the  Church  by  the  last 
slender  bond  of  a  formal  or  conventional  relationship. 

Though  probably  fewer  men  maintained  regular  reli- 
gious observance  in  the  army  than  in  civil  life,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  a  much  larger  proportion  of  men  occasion- 
ally attended  Church,  said  prayers,  or  read  the  Bible 
than  when  at  home.  Religion  received  a  certain  amount 
of  public  recognition  and  support  in  the  form  of  regi- 
mental services,  special  occasions,  etc.  The  alternatives 
were  frequently  very  few,  and  men  sometimes  felt  like 
the  Scotchman  who  explained  to  a  chaplain  in  the  well- 
filled  hut,  "Och !  We'd  gang  ony  where  on  a  nicht  like 
this." 

The  same  causes  which  interrupted  religious  habits 
resulted  in  a  very  general  disregard  of  Sunday.  Rou- 
tine was  maintained  with  little  change  in  training  camps. 
Any  observance  of  the  day  was  frequently  impossible 
overseas.  Recreation  and  entertainment  in  the  form  of 
games,  theaters,  etc.,  were  not  only  permitted  but  fre- 
quently encouraged.  IMany  chaplains  report,  "There  is 
likely  to  be  an  increased  neglect  of  Sunday." 

PUBLIC  WORSHIP 

Circumstances  in  the  army  led  to  a  great  informality 
in  religious  services.  The  surroundings  were  informal. 
The  men  were  of  many  traditions,  not  accustomed  to 
any  one  form.  The  hours  were  irregular.  This  tendency 
was  furthered  by  the  belief  on  the  part  of  many  religious 
workers  that  such  services  were  most  effective.  In  one 
direction  this  represents  a  gain.   Traditional  usages  have 


102    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


been  interrupted  and  we  may  expect  to  see  a  much 
greater  measure  of  experimentation  in  services  on  the 
part  of  ministers  who  have  served  in  the  army.  Many  of 
the  services  had  a  simpHcity  and  directness  and  intensity 
which  will  make  those  who  participated  restless  with 
much  of  our  common  worship.  The  judgment  of  the 
Anglican  Committee  on  Worship  applies  to  American 
conditions:  "We  think  it  is  true  to  say  that  nearly  all 
men  have  found  it  a  comfort  to  have  services  at  the  front 
which  obviously  aim  at  being  simple,  real  and  short. 
And  we  believe  it  is  fair  to  argue  that  a  great  number  of 
men  at  the  front  will  vote  that  by  contrast,  services  at 
home,  if  conducted  in  pre-war  fashion,  are  deficient  in 
these  qualities."*^ 

A  more  dubious  result  has  been  the  development  of  the 
"bright  and  snappy"  service  and  the  overstrained  effort 
to  express  religion  in  the  vernacular.  Still  worse  has 
been  the  combination  of  vaudeville  and  preaching,  and  the 
confusion  of  entertainment  with  worship. 

"In  many  cases  the  men  objected  to  such  informality  as 
combining  vaudeville  singing  and  jazz  band  music  with 
religious  services.  Some  welfare  secretaries  seemed  to 
think  the  men  wouldn't  take  religion  straight.  A  mis- 
taken notion." 

"So  many  men  have  said  to  me  that  they  go  to  church 
because  it  is  'quiet  and  restful' — and  these  men  of  small 
training — ^that  I  feel  there  is  danger  in  'bright  and 
snappy'  services.  They  do  want  clear-cut,  definite 
preaching  and  up-to-date  methods,  but  with  this  they 
want  dignity  and  fine  standards." 

"There  was  a  place  for  informal  services.  There  was 
also  a  place  for  services  of  dignity  and  beauty.  I  found  it 
helpful  to  have  a  printed  service  on  little  leaflets  which  I 
distributed  when  we  gathered  for  worship.  Often  I 
would  begin  with  a  talk,  and  get  the  men's  minds  and 
hearts  in  the  right  mood  and  attitude,  and  then  have  them 
read  the  service  with  me.  It  worked.  I  don't  think  we 
should  too  easily  dismiss  the  worth  of  formal  worship." 


The  Report  of  the  Archbishops'  Second  Committee  of  Inquiry. 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  103 


"I  should  query  whether  the  apparent  demand  for 
'bright  and  snappy'  services  is  not  rather  a  demand  for 
plainness  and  hard-hitting,  the  Billy  Sunday  or  John 
Bunyan  virtues,  of  which  the  'bright  and  snappy'  ideal 
is  but  a  tinsel  misinterpretation." 

In  certain  localities  and  among  certain  chaplains  there 
was  a  great  increase  in  the  use  of  the  Communion  service. 
At  Camp  Devens,  for  example,  there  was  an  early  Com- 
munion in  each  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  buildings  every  Sunday 
morning,  conducted  by  ministers  of  many  Protestant 
denominations  not  accustomed  to  the  frequent  use  of  the 
service.  Especially  in  the  case  of  Episcopal  chaplains 
this  service  was  very  largely  and  effectively  used  both  in 
this  country  and  in  France.  Many  believe  that  their 
experience  indicates  a  widespread  responsiveness  to  the 
sacramental  emphasis  and  calls  for  a  greatly  increased 
use  of  it  within  Protestantism.*^ 

"I  have  found  many  men  who  were  not  Episcopalians 
eager  for  the  Holy  Communion." 

"I  have  usually  had  the  Communion  service  with  my 
men  twice  a  month  and  have  found  them  very  apprecia- 
tive of  it." 

"The  value  of  the  Holy  Communion  as  the  service 
which  appeals  to  men  is  something  which  I  did  not  believe 
until  I  had  proved  it  for  myself." 

"I  share  the  common  experience  of  the  chaplains  that 
the  objective  in  religion  has  ministered  very  appeal- 
ingly."*=" 

"I  am  convinced  that  the  sacraments  and  their  teach- 
ings are  to  have  a  newer  meaning  and  a  wider  emphasis." 

"As  a  general  rule,  I  found  the  response  to  frequent 
Communion  services  very  genuine.  It  was  a  revelation 
to  me  of  the  value  of  the  Communion  as  a  vehicle  of  wor- 
ship to  see  how  men  would  come  regularly  to  a  tveekly 
Communion.  At  the  front  it  was  my  custom  to  admin- 
ister Communion  after  almost  any  Sunday  service,  and 

"  "Every  one  must  have  noticed  the  popularity  of  ritual,  and  especially 
of  sacraments,  among  men  who  had  not  previously  felt  any  particular  need 
or  inclination  for  these  ways  of  worship.  No  one  who  has  attended  Holy 
Communion  at  the  front,  where  little  companies  gathered  to  receive  the 
bread  and  wine,  will  ever  forget  how  singularly  appropriate  and  natural  it 
seemed."  John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching.  ' 
Published  interview  Virith  Senior  Chaplain  Brent. 


104    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


there  was  a  very  real  response.  But  the  response  was  just 
as  real  in  the  training  camp  in  France  before  we  went  to 
the  front,  and  in  our  last  billets  before  we  sailed  for 
home." 

"Attendance  on  weekly  Communion  services  in  my 
experience  was  not  at  all  limited  to  Lutherans  and  Epis- 
copalians. Men  from  all  churches  seemed  to  find  some- 
thing in  the  sacrament  which  filled  a  need  no  preaching 
service  could  reach.  I  believe  we  shall  all  come  to  a  more 
frequent  use  of  it."    (A  Presbyterian.) 

The  actual  extent  of  the  increase  is  impossible  to 
gauge.  Some  of  it  was  deceptive,  inasmuch  as  it  took 
place  where  there  were  great  numbers  of  men,  often 
constantly  shifting.  In  such  circumstances  the  in- 
creased frequency  or  prominence  of  the  service  would 
not  represent  a  similar  increase  in  its  use.  It  may  also 
be  true  that  under  the  circumstances  of  war  the  sacra- 
ment with  its  definiteness  and  objectivity  made  an 
appeal  which  it  would  not  have  with  the  same  men  in 
normal  life. 

SPECIAL  MINISTRIES 

In  the  army  certain  elements  in  the  ministry  were 
especially  called  for  and  widely  extended — especially 
the  ministry  of  personal  service,  the  ministry  to  the  sick, 
and  the  care  of  the  dead. 

Through  the  ministry  of  personal  service  many  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Church  have  come  in  touch  with  great 
numbers  of  men  whom  they  would  otherwise  have 
seldom  reached.  Though  the  number  of  chaplains  pro- 
vided by  the  army  was  entirely  inadequate,  the  chap- 
laincy gave  to  those  ministers  who  enlisted  in  it  a  very 
unusual  opportunity  to  serve  in  tangible  and  useful  ways 
the  men  with  whom  they  were  associated.  And  in  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  Red  Cross,  etc.,  many  more  clergymen  and 
laymen  found  a  like  opportunity.  What  the  results 
have  been  in  modifying  men's  views  of  the  professional 
ministry  we  do  not  know.    But  many  ministers  have 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  105 


returned  with  a  renewed  conviction  that  in  disinterested 
and  practical  service  to  the  concrete  and  felt  needs  of 
men  lies  the  most  direct  way  to  their  confidence  and 
loyalty. 

The  ministry  to  the  sick,  wounded  and  dying  was  one 
of  the  largest  and  most  important  elements  in  the  work 
of  the  chaplains.  "The  service  of  the  clergy  for  the  sick 
and  wounded  is  the  vivid  impression  that  the  war  has 
left  with  a  hundred  thousand  of  our  soldiers.  For  thou- 
sands more  it  was  their  last  experience  in  life.  While  at 
the  time  of  the  great  offensive,  the  mobile  and  evacuation 
hospitals  were  receiving  and  discharging  patients  by  the 
hundred,  the  chaplain  was  among  them,  ministering  to 
the  wounded,  receiving  last  messages,  and  administering 
last  rites  by  the  side  of  the  dying,  identifying  and  burying 
the  dead.  In  the  great  base  hospitals  farther  from  the 
lines  there  was  the  opportunity  for  continuous  inter- 
course and  growing  friendship  with  the  same  men  day 
after  day  as  they  were  nursed  back  to  health,  often  to 
their  places  in  the  line."*^ 

In  the  course  of  their  hospital  experience  several  Prot- 
estant chaplains  have  felt  the  need  of  something  similar 
to  the  last  rites  of  the  Roman  Church.** 

"I  think  that  the  war  will  teach  Protestantism  the  value 
of  symbolism.  I  have  been  particularly  impressed  with 
this  in  my  hospital  work  when  I  have  had  to  deal  with 
men  whose  apprehension  had  been  dulled  by  disease  or 


"Chaplain  James  DeW.  Perry,  Jr. 

"  "Ritual  is  a  compressed  and  rapid  language,  able  to  express  much  in 
a  simple  gesture.  One  need  be  no  believer  in  magic  to  profit  from  the 
dedication  implied  in  making  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  or  in  having  it  made 
over  him.  A  nurse  in  a  base  hospital,  who  has  had  occasion  to  witness  many 
deaths,  contrasts  the  simplicity  of  the  Catholic  rites  and  their  evident  value 
for  the  men  with  the  semi-embarrassment  of  the  Protestant  minister,  who 
must,  as  person  to  person,  find  'something  to  say.'  The  rite  ought  to  bring 
to  the  dying  man  an  authoritative  gesture  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  race, 
declaring  to  him  that  in  the  solitude  of  passing  he  is  accompanied  by  a 
divine  solicitude. 

"Such  an  affirmation  cannot  be  rightly  made,  it  is  true,  except  by  a 
thinker;  here  Protestantism  is  right  as  against  any  quasi  mechanical  ad- 
ministration of  sacraments.  But  neither  can  such  an  affirmation  be  com- 
petently made  by  any  individual  on  his  own  authority;  here  the  organization 
which  to  any  man  best  represents  our  spiritual  heritage  is  alone  competent, 
for  the  reason  that  it  alone  can  convey  to  him  the  meaning."  W.  E. 
Hocking,  in  Atlantic  Monthly. 


106    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


injury.  There  have  been  times  when  it  has  been  prac- 
tically impossible  to  give  them  ideas  through  the  spoken 
word,  but  when,  if  for  instance  they  had  been  taught  the 
symbolism  of  the  Cross,  an  idea  could  have  been  given 
them  through  the  sense  of  sight,  which  would  have  been 
a  great  help." 

"I  used  to  think  the  R.  C.'s  had  an  advantage  in  their 
confessional  and  ritual  for  the  dying.  It  was  something 
they  were  accustomed  to  from  childhood  and  was  natural 
and  comforting,  but  I  did  not  see  how  without  that  child- 
hood training  we  Protestants  could  improvise  an  equiv- 
alent ritual  or  ceremony." 

It  has  been  pointed  out,  on  the  other  hand,  that  men 
trained  to  dependence  on  the  Church  for  their  assurance 
of  God's  care  and  forgiveness  suflEered  additional  dis- 
tress when  under  the  circumstances  of  battle  they  had  to 
die  without  its  ministrations. 

The  experience  in  the  army  has  demonstrated  what  was 
apparent  in  civil  life,  how  religion  and  the  Church  re- 
tain their  hold  on  death  long  after  they  have  lost  their 
hold  on  life.  No  function  of  the  chaplain  was  more  uni- 
versally demanded  and  respected  than  the  care  of  the 
dead.  "Never  will  the  salute  of  the  men  be  more  reverent, 
their  greeting  more  aflPectionate,  their  wistful  gratitude 
more  apparent  than  when  the  chaplain  returns  to  his  out- 
fit, footsore  and  weary  of  heart,  after  a  day  spent  in  the 
burial  of  those  who  have  been  called  upon  to  make  the 
supreme  sacrifice."  Under  the  conditions  of  war  "inti- 
mate and  loving  family  care  is  impossible,  and  the  sense 
of  gratitude  to  the  one  who  will  assume  that  labor  is 
unbounded  and  inexpressible."*'' 

Men  were  ready  to  take  part  in  burial  services  even  at 
considerable  personal  risk.  "I  remember  one  occasion 
in  particular  where  I  called  for  volunteers  as  the  plot 
was  under  fire,  and  the  whole  battery  volunteered.  It 
was  quite  trying  for  me  to  stand  there  by  the  grave  in  the 
dripping  rain,  exposed  to  shell-fire,  but  the  men  in  the 


**  Chaplain  Brent's  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General. 


CHURCHES  AND  CHURCHMANSHIP  107 


party  were  quiet  and  respectful,  while  the  chaplain  said 
prayers  and  there  was  not  the  slightest  indication  that 
they  were  not  glad  to  expose  themselves  in  order  that 
the  forms  of  the  Church  might  be  observed." 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  AND 
STANDARDS 

The  same  differences  of  opinion  as  to  the  total  effect 
of  war  and  military  training  appear  in  the  case  of  moral 
life  and  standards  as  were  reported  in  the  case  of  personal 
religion.  There  are  observers  who  find  no  marked  change. 
There  are  those  who  feel  certain  of  improvement  or  retro- 
gression. The  question  of  permanence  is  always  present. 
It  is  impossible  to  strike  a  satisfactory  balance  between 
local  losses  and  local  gains,  improvement  in  certain  direc- 
tions and  demoralization  in  others. 

"The  constantly  recurring  question,  Does  war  improve 
men  or  deteriorate  them?  is  a  question  which  has  no 
answer.  For  war  itself  does  neither  one  thing  nor  another. 
Certainly  neither  war  nor  any  other  drastic  experience 
leaves  men  where  it  found  them.  But  any  exposure  of 
large  bodies  of  men  to  extraordinary  conditions  will 
segregate  them  into  two  groups,  those  who  are  strength- 
ened by  the  ordeal  and  those  weakened  by  it."** 

THE  EFFECTS  OF  ARMY  DISCIPLINE 
There  is  a  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  perma- 
nent, or  even  the  immediate,  effects  of  army  discipline. 
On  the  one  hand,  men  speak  of  the  added  virility  and 
breadth,  of  the  subordination  of  self-interest,  the  learn- 
ing of  obedience  and  the  meaning  of  authority ;  on  the 
other  hand,  of  the  lowering  of  individual  initiative  and 
responsibility,  and  of  an  outward  and  legalistic  view  of 
obedience  developed  by  army  life. 

Unquestionably,  thousands  of  men  have  gained 
mentally  and  physically   from  the  comradeship  and 


*•  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  109 


discipline  of  the  army.  Frail  men  have  found  health, 
"soft"  men  have  gained  in  healthy  physical  and  spiritual 
readiness  to  "endure  hardness,"  timid  men  have  learned 
to  mingle  naturally  with  their  fellows,  indolent  and 
self-indulgent  men  have  lived  in  the  service  temperate 
and  vigorous  lives.  All  this  is  gain  even  though  tem- 
porary. 

The  evils  of  military  discipline  lie  chiefly  in  the  loss  of 
personal  initiative  and  the  outward  and  legalistic  view 
of  obedience  that  it  may  foster. 

"The  army  has  the  machinery  by  which  it  can  force  me 
to  obey ;  anything  that  I  can  do  to  evade  that  machinery 
is  perfectly  legitimate.  It  is  the  army's  concern  to  make 
a  soldier  of  me ;  it  is  my  concern  to  endure  the  process 
with  as  little  discomfort  to  myself  as  I  can."" 

"The  soldier's  life  is  so  arranged  that  the  only  thing  to 
do  is  to  be  irresponsible.   His  food,  shelter,  and  clothing 

are  to  be  provided  for  him  He  can  do  nothing  of 

his  own  volition  The  shape  of  his  shoes,  the 

color  of  his  hat,  and  the  size  of  his  necktie,  and  the  place 
of  his  bed  are  regulated  and  determined  for  him.  He 
lives  a  life  where  the  will  has  no  meaning,  and  where 
thought  and  initiative  are  not  only  not  demanded  but 
suppressed."" 

"Another  year  of  this  and  I  won't  be  worth  while  Hving 
to  do  anything  more  than  wrap  up  packages  and  run 
errands.  It  may  be  that  the  deadening  effect  of  it  will 
wear  of?  in  a  few  weeks.   I  hope  so."  (An  enlisted  man.) 

"In  my  observation,  there  was  no  lowering  of  individual 
initiative  among  the  men.  Perhaps  the  artillery,  where  I 
served,  is  better  in  this  regard  than  some  other  branches. 
Great  individual  initiative  and  responsibility  are  neces- 
sary to  success  when  an  artillery  regiment  is  in  action,  or 
moving  about  at  the  front.  Take  a  driver  of  a  four-line 
mule  team,  hauling  supplies.  He  will  be  routed  out  at 
midnight  and  told  to  hitch  up  and  take  a  load  out 
through  the  night  to  some  place  at  the  front  he  has  never 
visited.  He  must  go  over  strange  roads,  often  through 
shell  fire,  find  the  place,  deliver  his  load,  and  get  his  mules 


"  T.  W.  Pym,  "Papers  from  Picardy." 

« Frank  Tannenbaum,  "The  Moral  Devastation  of  War,"  The  Dial, 
April,  1919. 


110    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


back  to  camp.  That's  pretty  different  from  driving  horses 
on  a  farm  or  pushing  a  pen  in  some  office.  Take  the  non- 
commissioned officers — every  corporal  is  absolutely 
responsible  for  the  men  under  him,  their  appearance, 
safety,  discipline,  efficiency.  Take  the  mechanics,  who 
must  know  the  guns  better  than  the  officers,  and  be 
responsible  that  they  are  always  in  shape  for  instant  use. 
Take  the  mess  sergeants  and  stable  sergeants,  the  horse- 
shoers — each  has  a  job  whose  responsibility  is  really 
tremendous." 

The  resultant  of  these  influences,  good  and  bad,  it  is 
impossible  to  prophesy.  At  best  we  can  only  suggest  the 
possibilities. 

"The  soldier's  life  is  unsettled;  will  that  produce  in 
him  a  habit  of  restlessness  and  roving?  He  is  accustomed 
to  destroy,  not  construct ;  will  that  make  him  a  waster, 
and  put  him  out  of  patience  with  the  slow  building  of 
production  ?  He  is  used  to  sensational  and  sudden  effec- 
tiveness ;  will  this  impose  on  him  a  dramatic  or  melo- 
dramatic mind,  making  all  'piping  times  of  peace'  dull  to 
him,  and  unnerve  him  for  all  quiet  labor?  He  is  habitu- 
ated to  consuming,  living  by  requisition  on  goods  sup- 
plied lavishly  (sometimes)  by  others;  will  this  create  in 
him  the  temper  of  dependency  ? 

"Above  all,  the  soldier  has  borne  the  brunt,  and  he 
knows  it.  What  will  be  the  effect  of  that  ?  What  argu- 
ment is  it  building  up  in  him  today?  'Now,  civilians,  our 
share  is  done ;  we  rest  on  our  laurels ;  give  us  our  ease 
and  our  rewards'  ?  Or  is  it  this :  'We  have  learned  to 
choose  the  harder  part,  and  to  do  more  than  our  share ; 
give  us  our  heaviest  burdens  and  we  will  show  you  how 
men  can  carry  them'  ? 

"There  is  no  prophet  who  ought  to  venture  an  answer 
to  these  questions,  unless  he  can  see  with  what  hidden 
approvals,  rebellions,  provisos  the  alleged  'habits'  are 
being  accepted."** 

It  is  this  last  consideration  which  needs  especially  to 
be  kept  in  mind  in  discussing  the  effect  of  military  ex- 
perience on  men's  mental  or  moral  life.  To  "submit" 
to  discipline  for  a  time  as  being  something  essential  to  the 


"W.  E.  Hocking,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE 


111 


performance  of  an  unpleasant  and  distasteful  duty,  all 
the  while  loving  independence,  is  altogether  different  from 
"succumbing"  to  discipline  from  mental  laziness  and  lack 
of  initiative,  however  much  they  may  look  alike  out- 
wardly. 

This  factor  of  motive  has  been  much  overlooked  in  the 
discussion  as  to  whether  the  war  has  "brutalized"  men. 
It  is  not  uncommonly  said  that  men  "have  been  hard- 
ened and  to  some  extent  brutalized."  It  is  a  result 
which  "the  pacifist"  in  many  of  us  almost  wants  to  see. 
It  would  be  additional  evidence  of  how  cruel  and  brutal 
a  thing  war  is.  But  we  do  not  believe  that  any  such 
result  can  be  largely  seen  in  the  men  returning  from 
active  service. 

Dr.  Kelman  has  the  following  to  say  on  this  topic  as 
a  result  of  his  observation  of  British  troops : 

"It  has  often  been  lamented  that  the  dreadful  deeds 
which  have  to  be  performed  in  such  actions  as  a  bayonet 
charge  or  a  bombing  raid  upon  enemy  trenches  must  per- 
manently brutalize  those  who  have  to  do  them.  This 
however  is  not  the  report  of  those  who  know  the  men. 
....  It  seems  to  be  the  motive  and  not  the  deed  that 
counts  in  permanent  moral  consequence.""" 

THE  EFFECT  OF  THE  GROUP  EMPHASIS 
Perhaps  the  greatest  single  factor  in  the  army  as  it 
affected  moral  standards  and  moral  life  was  its  group 
character.  Circumstances  and  training  developed  a  tre- 
mendous "community"  of  interests.  Not  only  were 
men  dressed  alike.  They  were  drilled  as  a  "body." 
They  were  dealt  with  as  a  "body."  They  were  all  in 
essentially  the  same  "fix."  They  were  separated  from  the 
special  interests  and  groupings  which  normally  influ- 
enced them.  The  whole  life  was  corporate.  Men  tended 
to  an  extraordinary  degree  to  feel  alike  and  think  alike. 
Ideas,  rumors,  suspicions,  criticism,  sentiments,  were  as 
epidemic   as   the   highly   communicable   diseases  like 


"John  Kelman,  "The  War  and  Preaching." 


112    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


measles  and  influenza.  The  result  was  not  only  an  ideal, 
if  very  partial,  democracy,  but  a  heightening  of  group 
morality.  The  virtues  sustained  by  the  groups,  the  vir- 
tues with  a  strong  element  of  sociability  in  them,  the 
virtues  especially  demanded  between  man  and  man  in 
close  contact,  were  at  a  premium — unselfishness,  gener- 
osity, humility,  loyalty  to  the  unit. 

At  the  same  time  many  influences  served  to  weaken  the 
morality  of  self-control — the  loss  of  personal  responsibil- 
ity, the  greatly  heightened  physical  stimulus  or  excite- 
ment, the  separation  from  the  home  interests  calling  for 
sexual  restraint,  the  upsetting  of  the  normal  economic 
life  calling  for  economic  prudence,  and  the  lack  of  the 
refinements  of  life  demanding  some  niceness  in  language. 

According  to  at  least  one  prominent  observer  the  result 
was  something  of  a  conflict  between  the  ethic  of  the 
soldiers  and  the  ethic  of  the  preachers  of  Christianity. 
"The  preachers  were  denouncing  drinking,  gambling,  and 
immorality.  The  people  were  denouncing  cowardice, 
selfishness,  and  egotism. "^^  To  what  extent  this  conflict 
of  emphasis  became  articulate  among  the  men  except 
through  Judge  Lindsey  we  do  not  know.  But  we  believe 
it  helps  to  explain  the  considerable  criticism  of  the 
"negative  ethics"  of  the  Church  that  has  come  out  of  the 
army.  The  Church  has  frequently  appeared  to  put  first 
emphasis  on  the  morality  of  self-control,  on  the  virtues 
which  make  a  man  "above  reproach. "^^  Army  life  called 
especially  for  the  virtues  which  make  an  easy  companion 
and  desirable  neighbor. 

"A  great  spirit  of  brotherhood  has  developed  in  the 
army." 

"As  a  result  of  the  military  life  men  ....  learned 
to  play  the  game  with  others." 

Ben  Lindsey,  "The  Doughboy's  Religion,"  Cosmopolitan. 
"  "I  was  in  an  officers'  mess  some  time  ago,  and  they  were  discussing  a 
new  arrival.  One  of  them  said:  'He  is  quiet,  he  doesn't  smoke,  doesn't 
drink,  doesn't  play  bridge,  and  doesn't  swear.'  'He  must  be  religious,'  con- 
cluded another.  If  the  new  officer  had  been  described  as  cheerful,  generous, 
hospitable,  and  brave,  they  would  not  have  concluded  that  he  must  be 
religious.    Yet  which  description  is  the  most  like  Christ?"    Thomas  Tiplady. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  113 


GAMBLING 

As  already  indicated  in  Part  I,  the  vices  obvious  in  the 
army  were  gambling,  profanity  and  sexual  immorality. 
It  is  generally  agreed  that  the  first  two  showed  a  decided 
increase  over  civil  life.  The  third  presents  a  more  com- 
plex problem. 

"It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  practically  every 
soldier  gambles."*^ 

"Men  gamble  who  do  not  in  civil  life." 

"Young  men  who  never  gambled  before  are  now  gam- 
bling.'"^* 

Various  influences  combined  to  bring  this  about.  "No 
longer  master  of  tomorrow,  the  spirit  of  chance  and 
adventure  enter  as  foresight  disappears. "^^  Money  was 
of  little  value.  Its  loss  left  a  man  still  provided  with  the 
necessities  of  life.  The  whole  atmosphere  of  economic 
prudence  was  far  away.  Entertainment  was  rare  and 
essential.  The  games  of  chance,  whether  crap  or  cards, 
required  little  paraphernalia  and  could  be  played  under 
all  circumstances.  Though  the  army  took  an  official 
position  against  gambling,  it  was  often  not  enforced  and 
often  not  enforceable  without  continuous  'spying.' 

It  is  impossible  to  say  how  largely  this  increase  will  be 
carried  over  into  civil  life,  where  the  conditions  are  so 
different.  Gambling  is  certainly  not  very  seriously  dis- 
approved of  by  the  majority  of  young  men.  Probably 
many  have  gambled  more  or  less  habitually  in  the  army 
who  did  so  rarely  or  not  at  all  before.  Probably  many 
have  less  conviction  against  something  that  was  so  gen- 
erally accepted  in  military  life. 

PROFANITY 

"Swearing  undoubtedly  increased."  "The  men  were 
under  a  severe  strain  which  manifested  itself  in  a  great 

"Frank  Tannenbaum,  "The  Moral  Devastation  of  War,"  The  Dial, 
April,  1919. 

"  "The  testimony  of  religious  workers  is  not  wholly  dependable,  since 
many  ministers  in  civil  life  are  dealinR  only  with  a  selected  class  and  not 
as  in  the  army  with  men  drawn  from  all  ranks  of  society." 

«  W.  E.  HockinK,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


114    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


increase  in  profanity."  The  main  influences  in  bringing 
about  this  increase  were  the  general  crudeness  of  the 
surroundings,  and  the  roughness  of  the  life,  the  absence 
of  woman,  and  the  tension  and  strain  of  war. 

Most  chaplains  tend  to  minimize  its  religious  or  moral 
significance  and  think  of  it  as  mainly  due  to  the  abnormal 
conditions  of  military  life. 

"Men  in  the  army  use  a  flow  of  language  that  would 
sicken,  not  meaning  very  much  by  it." 

"Most  army  profanity  was  a  juvenile  habit,  meaning 
less  than  it  sounded." 

"They  are  as  profane  as  any  men  I  have  ever  heard. 
In  the  mass  the  boys  do  not  mean  to  be  profane.  This 
blasphemy  is  not  the  output  of  irreverence,  their  foul 
words  are  not  the  evidence  of  inner  foulness.  Much  of  it 
is  no  more  than  the  hysteria  of  a  terrible  experience,  the 
falsetto  of  overwrought  nerves,  the  effort  to  express  the 
inexpressible ;  much  of  it  is  a  habit  acquired  uncommonly 
which  they  will  shake  off  as  they  shake  off  the  mud  of  the 
trenches." 

SEXUAL  IMMORALITY 
Two  groups  of  influences  were  brought  to  bear  on 
sexual  morality  by  the  war — conditions  induced  by  war 
itself  and  the  policy  of  the  government  and  allied 
agencies. 

The  circumstances  of  war  were  mainly  demoralizing 
as  regards  sex  life.  The  separation  of  men  from  home 
and  the  normal  associations  with  women  not  only  took 
away  accustomed  supports  but  heightened  men's  interest 
in  the  other  sex.  "In  the  daily  routine  of  peace,  men  and 
women  acquire  the  habit  of  forgetting  that  they  are  men 
and  women.  They  are  able  to  deal  with  each  other,  not 
quite  impersonally,  but  unsexually,  as  buyers  and  sellers, 
as  employers  and  employed,  etc.  This  equilibrium  war 
everywhere  destroys. "°®  Furthermore,  the  boredom, 
monotony,  and  restraint  of  military  life  called  for  excite- 
ment and  easily  turned  "leave"  into  a  "moral  holiday." 


"  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  115 


Overseas  there  were  added  to  these  influences  the  intense 
stimulus  of  warfare  combined  with  the  extreme  relaxa- 
tion of  the  rest  periods,  and  in  some  sections  an  astonish- 
ing amount  of  professional  and  amateur  "solicitation." 

Combating  these  influences  was  the  policy  of  the 
government,  military  authorities,  and  allied  agencies.  It 
is  fair  to  say  that  the  central  objective  in  this  policy, 
though  not  of  course  the  only  one,  was  the  elimination  of 
venereal  disease. 

As  summarized  by  the  Surgeon  General,  "The  Ameri- 
can attack  on  venereal  diseases  has  been  upon  the  follow- 
ing lines : 

1.  The  education  of  soldiers  and  civilians  as  to  the 
physical  dangers  of  venereal  disease. 

2.  Discouragement  tending  to  prohibition  of  the  use 
of  all  forms  of  intoxicants,  the  idea  being  that  the  sexual 
impulses  are  always  excited  by  such  stimulation  and 
self-control  diminished. 

3.  Repression  of  all  forms  of  illicit  sexual  intercourse, 
both  clandestine  and  public,  under  the  theory  first  ad- 
vanced by  American  medical  men,  that  the  exercise  of 
the  sexual  functions  is  not  essential  to  health  and  manly 
vigor. 

4.  Thoroughgoing  provision  for,  and  use  of,  the  pro- 
phylactic treatment. 

5.  The  employment  of  stern  measures  and  adequate 
punishment  for  those  contracting  venereal  disease. 

6.  The  calling  into  play  of  physical,  social,  moral  and 
even  religious  factors,  that  might  aid  in  keeping  men  free 
from  illicit  sexual  intercourse,  and  thus  free  from  dis- 
abling venereal  disease. "^^ 

In  the  camps  in  this  country  this  program  in  all  its 
elements  was  carried  out  with  remarkable  effectiveness. 
Overseas  the  same  thoroughness  was  not  possible.  "The 
foreign  governments  with  which  it  was  necessary  to  deal 

Surgeon  General's  Report,  June  30,  1918. 


116    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


held  views  about  prostitution  very  different  from  ours. 
The  French  believed  in  'toleration'  and  'regulation.' 
For  generations  they  had  been  used  to  licensed  brothels 
and  registered  prostitutes,  inspected  with  greater  or  less 
care  by  medical  officers.  They  felt  that  an  army  could 
not  get  along  without  sexual  indulgence,  and  that  an 
attempt  to  carry  out  such  a  policy  was  to  court  discon- 
tent, a  lowering  of  morale  and  health  standards,  and  per- 
haps even  mutiny.  So  sincerely  did  they  believe  this 
that  prostitution  facilities  for  our  soldiers  were  officially 
offered  to  the  American  High  Command."^* 

As  a  result  of  the  educational,  recreational  and  repres- 
sive measures,  the  situation  was  unquestionably  better 
in  many  of  the  large  training  camps  than  it  is  in  many 
civilian  communities.  Men  had  a  more  intelligent 
knowledge  of  the  risks.  Alternative  entertainment  was 
at  hand.  Solicitation  and  sex  appeal  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood  were  practically  eliminated.  A  man  had 
to  look  for  trouble  and  look  hard.  It  is  from  these  home 
camps  that  one  receives  the  more  optimistic  reports. 

"As  to  moral  life  it  was  somewhat  better  in  the  army 
than  out  of  it." 

"The  men  have  been  living  far  cleaner  and  more  tem- 
perate lives  than  in  civil  life." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  certain  areas  in  France  there 
was  a  serious  loss.  Of  such  conditions  the  base  port 
already  mentioned  is  an  example.  Men  were  free,  with- 
out the  restraint  of  home  opinion,  and  temptation  was 
constant  and  fearfully  insistent.  The  results  among  both 
officers  and  men  were  very  bad.  It  is  these  areas  that 
account  for  the  especially  pessimistic  reports. 

"The  leave  periods  are  tinies  of  temptation  that  are 
making  a  sad  record." 

"There's  a  saying  here  that  after  six  months  in  the  ser- 
vice if  a  man  hasn't  had  a  sexual  experience  he  is  either  a 
liar  or  a  coward." 


"  Raymond  Fosdick,  in  The  New  Republic. 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MOR.\L  LIFE 


117 


There  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  remarkable  effectiveness 
of  the  army  poHcy  in  reducing  ilHcit  sexual  intercourse, 
where  jurisdiction  over  the  neighborhood  was  permitted. 

"The  army  statistics  indicate  that  the  rate  of  venereal 
infection  contracted  after  admission  to  the  army  for  the 
first  year  of  the  war  will  be  approximately  20  per  1,000 
men  in  the  United  States  and  47  per  1,000  men  in  the 
expeditionary  forces.  The  lowest  rate  attained  prior  to 
the  present  war  was  91.23."*^  As  compared  with  the 
rate  during  periods  when  men  were  being  inducted  into 
the  service  and  including  the  cases  brought  in,  reaching 
162.4  per  1,000  in  the  National  Army,  the  improvement  is 
marked. 

If  these  results  were  always  attained  at  the  expense  of 
an  increasing  prophylaxis  rate  there  would  be  small  com- 
fort in  them  for  the  moralist.  But  such  was  not  the 
case.  For  example,  in  the  case  of  the  base  port  cited  by 
Mr.  Fosdick  and  already  referred  to,  the  houses  of  prosti- 
tution were  eventually  placed  out  of  bounds.  "The 
figures  show  what  happened."*" 


Disease 

Month 

Troops 

Prophylaxis 

Cases 

Houses 

August 

4,571 

1,669 

72 

open 

September 

9,471 

3,393 

124 

October 

3,966 

2,074 

67 

Houses 

November 

7,017 

885 

81 

out  of 

December 

4,281 

539 

44 

bounds 

January 

3,777 

523 

8 

Colonel  Snow  has  published  a  chart  showing  the  effect 
of  public  health  measures  and  law  enforcement  in  lower- 
ing the  venereal  and  prophylactic  rates  among  troops 
stationed  in  and  around  San  Francisco.  In  the  four 
months'  period  illustrated  not  only  did  the  venereal  rate 
go  down,  but  the  prophylactic  rate  was  reduced  from 
800  to  300. 

"  Rt.  Rev.  Wm.  Lawrence,  "Venereal  Disease  in  the  Army,  Navy,  and 
Community." 

Raymond  Fosdick,  "The  Fight  Against  Venereal  Disease,"  The  New 
Republic,  Nov.  30,  1918. 


118    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


There  is  a  sharp  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  moral 
effect  of  prophylaxis  as  administered  in  the  army.  The 
official  and  authoritative  position  was  entirely  admirable. 
It  approached  the  subject  primarily  from  the  medical 
viewpoint,  but  it  was  emphatically  against  illicit  sexual 
relations,  upheld  the  possibility  and  healthfulness  of 
continence  and  interpreted  the  early  preventive  treat- 
ment, not  as  a  protection  of  the  individual  from  the  conse- 
quences of  his  own  guilt,  but  as  a  protection  of  the  com- 
munity. But  in  the  administration  of  treatment  and  the 
giving  out  of  instruction  the  army  had  to  work  through 
officers  and  doctors  whose  personal  convictions  and  lives 
were  not  always  in  accord  with  the  official  position.  At 
best,  prophylaxis  involves  delicate  moral  problems.  Its 
systematic  administration  acknowledges  "the  customari- 
ness  of  the  breach  of  custom  involved ;  the  psychological 
step  from  this  to  an  appearance  of  official  sanction  is  a 
short  one."®*  It  readily  becomes  an  admission  of  the 
situation  and  a  mere  cynical  avoidance  of  personal  risks. 
It  is  the  difference  in  the  attitudes  of  officers  and  doctors 
that  probably  accounts  largely  for  the  conflicting  impres- 
sions resulting. 

"The  army  itself,  acting  under  orders,  has  held  up  a 
higher  moral  standard  than  ever  before  in  history.  It  has 
taught  in  every  way  it  could  that  the  prevention  of  the 
consequences  of  impurity,  the  cure  of  the  disease  con- 
tracted, is  not  the  first  barrier  it  would  raise,  but  the  last 
and  most  desperate ;  the  barrier  not  for  the  strong  man 
and  efficient  soldier,  but  for  the  weakling  who  must  be 
saved,  if  possible  in  spite  even  of  himself  and  his  weak- 
ness." 

"Military  methods  in  dealing  with  venereal  disease  will 
have  had,  I  believe,  an  effect  good  rather  than  bad." 

"The  treatment  of  venereal  diseases  tends  to  make  the 
soldier  consider  them  from  a  physical  point  of  view." 

"The  army's  attitude  is  simply  to  safeguard  the  men 
from  the  physical  consequences  of  sin,  and  sometimes  I 
fear  the  men  get  the  idea  that  when  they  have  escaped 


"  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Morale  and  Its  Enemies." 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  119 


the  consequences  they  have  done  all  that  is  to  be  required 
of  them." 

"For  a  fellow  to  be  clean  means  something  very  differ- 
ent today  than  it  used  to.  It  doesn't  mean  that  he  is  pure 
sexually  but  that  he  hasn't  contracted  some  disease." 

"The  example  of  officers  is  bad.  Medical  officers  have 
presented  the  moral  question  as  required  by  the  army  but 
have  said  they  didn't  live  up  to  it,  and  have  suggested  that 
men  do  as  they  please,  so  long  as  they  didn't  get  caught." 

"It  has  been  noted  that  where  officers,  non-commis- 
sioned as  well  as  commissioned,  have  a  sense  of  responsi- 
biHty  for  the  moral,  not  less  than  the  military  character 
of  their  men,  a  clean  command  is  the  result. "^^ 

"There  is  a  great  difference  in  the  way  prophylaxis  is 
administered,  and  its  use  or  abuse,  its  good  or  harm,  may 
be  governed  thereby.  In  some  stations,  the  treatment 
was  given  in  a  joking  way,  with  little  or  no  attempt  at 
privacy.  Some  men  would  be  shamed  out  of  taking  the 
treatment,  and  thereby,  in  perhaps  their  first  exposure, 
run  great  danger  of  infection.  Others  would  have  all 
their  sense  of  modesty  broken  down,  and  become  utterly 
shameless.  In  my  own  regiment,  we  were  lucky  enough 
to  have  a  surgeon  with  the  good  sense  to  insist  on  having 
prophylactic  treatment  administered  with  the  utmost  pri- 
vacy. The  patient  was  always  taken  into  a  separate 
room,  with  no  one  present  except  the  man  who  adminis- 
tered the  dose." 

The  effect  of  the  looser  standards  of  sexual  morality 
in  France  upon  the  minds  of  the  American  men  who 
have  been  overseas  we  cannot  now  determine.  That 
there  is  the  possibility  of  lowered  social  ideals  is  clear. 

"The  standard  of  home  life  that  they  have  seen  over 
here  is  not  American,  and  with  its  peculiar  freedom  and 
subtle  charm,  not  a  few  are  ready,  at  least  for  a  time, 

to  accept  it  The  social  sin  is  to  many  not  a  sin 

but  a  natural  gratification  of  desire,  falsely  condemned 
at  home.  This  I  have  heard  asserted  again  and  again. 
'The  false  standards  of  the  people  of  America  need  to 
be  corrected,'  they  say,  'or  at  least  modified,  and  the  real 
truth  taught.'"  (A  private;  formerly  a  teacher  of  psy- 
chology.) 


"  Chaplain  Brent's  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General. 


120    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


On  the  other  hand  there  are  many  who  recognize  the 
problem  with  equal  clearness  but  who  feel  that  the  con- 
tact with  lower  standards  will  tend  to  make  the  men 
more  appreciative  of,  and  more  loyal  to,  the  higher  ideals 
that  are  held  before  them  at  home. 

PETTY  STEALING 
This  was  one  of  the  special  developments  of  army  life, 
especially  overseas.  It  appears  to  have  been  common 
from  "stores"  and  to  a  less  extent  from  fellow-soldiers. 
There  is  a  general  agreement  that  its  occurrence  is  not 
very  significant.  But  it  must  be  remarked  that  such  steal- 
ing often  indicated  a  lack  of  consideration  for  the  com- 
fort and  needs  of  other  men  which  make  it  distinctly  a 
selfish  "looking  out  for  number  one." 

"This  is  not  significant  as  stealing,  but  probably  comes 
out  of  the  strong  community  sense  in  the  army.  There  is 
a  lack  of  the  sense  of  personal  possession.  Whatever  is 
loose  and  one  wants,  one  expects  to  take.  Possibly  it 
issued  in  the  A.  E.  F.  from  the  combat  days  when  it  was 
understood  that  everything  was  common  property.  It 
has  continued  with  decreasing  force  since  then." 

"We  have  a  new  word  for  stealing  in  the  army — 
namely,  'salvaging.'  Men  will  salvage  almost  anything, 
and  there  is  little  regard  for  property  rights.  Perhaps 
there  is  reason  for  this  in  the  fact  that  on  his  arrival  in 
France  the  soldier  was  often  compelled  to  turn  in  his 
barracks  bag  with  all  the  personal  property  it  contained; 
he  was  then  sent  to  the  front  with  the  minimum  of  equip- 
ment. Now  he  feels,  perhaps,  he  may  get  some  of  it 
back.  Probably  the  point  of  view  will  disappear  after 
demobilization." 

Although  the  abnormal  conditions  of  military  life  have 
created  serious  moral  problems,  men  have  had  an  op- 
portunity in  the  army  to  learn  by  experience  many  of 
the  moral  lessons  the  Church  is  engaged  in  teaching. 
"The  soldiers  have  been  learning  subordination  of  their 
individual  desires  to  the  good  of  the  army.    They  have 


THE  EFFECT  ON  MORAL  LIFE  121 


been  learning  a  very  real  lesson  in  a  brotherhood  which 
takes  no  account  of  property  ownership  or  class  distinc- 
tion. They  have  learned  how  to  do  team  work.  They 
have  learned  intense  loyalty  to  leadership.  They  have 
learned  the  satisfaction  of  binding  their  lives  to  a  great 
purpose,  and  above  all  they  have  learned  that  the  great 
enthusiasms  of  life  are  reserved  for  those  who  suffer 
in  a  great  cause." 

At  any  rate  they  have  had  a  chance  to  learn  these 
things  and  are  better  prepared  to  understand  them. 


SUMMARY  OF  PART  II 


If  it  was  difficult  to  make  generalizations  concerning 
the  religious  and  moral  life  of  the  men  as  they  came  into 
the  army  from  civilian  life,  it  is  even  more  difficult  to 
generalize  concerning  the  effect  of  the  war  and  military 
training  on  the  men.  The  conditions  under  which  various 
sections  of  the  army  lived  were  so  diverse  that  we  must 
safeguard  nearly  all  of  our  conclusions  with  the  re- 
minder that  there  were  undoubtedly  many  groups  to 
which  the  following  summaries  do  not  fully  apply. 

I.    The  Effects  on  Personal  Religion — Faith  and  Prac- 
tice. 

1.  As  to  the  total  effect  of  military  training  and  war 
on  the  personal  religion  of  the  men  in  the  army  we  do 
not  yet  know.  There  is  much  evidence  that  there  has 
been  very  little  change.  Yet  many  observers  believe  that 
the  outcome  has  been  conducive  to  religion,  while  many 
others  are  sure  that  there  has  been  more  loss  than  gain. 
Evidently  there  have  been  gains  in  some  directions  and 
losses  in  others,  and  we  have  to  admit  that  we  have  no 
scale  of  values  by  which  to  weigh  the  net  result.  We 
have  also  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  religion  of  the  trenches 
was  largely  "emergency  religion,"  and  that  concerning 
its  permanent  significance  we  cannot  yet  decide. 

2.  It  seems  clear,  however,  that  in  all  military  areas, 
there  were  occasions  that  "made  men  think" — such  occa- 
sions as  enlistment,  embarkation,  actual  advance  to  the 
front,  or  recuperation  from  wounds.  Temporarily  at 
least  large  numbers  of  men  were  made  more  serious  and 
impressionable. 


SUMMARY  OF  PART  II  123 


3.  The  effect  of  this  heightening  of  interest  in  serious 
things  was  to  lead  many  men  whose  religious  life  had 
been  rather  conventional  before  into  a  more  active  and 
conscious  faith.  There  was  also  a  considerable  body  of 
formal  new  decisions  to  lead  better  lives.  But  it  cannot 
be  said  that  there  was  any  "mass  movement"  toward 
religion  or  any  large  accession  to  the  ranks  of  definite 
Christianity.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  little  concrete 
evidence  of  loss  of  religious  faith,  although  a  general 
dulling  of  sensibilities  and  lowering  of  standards  as  a 
result  of  combatant  service  is  sometimes  noted. 

4.  A  more  vivid  sense  of  the  need  for,  and  the  reality 
of,  God  came  to  many  men  at  the  front.  They  conceived 
Him  mainly  as  Protector  or  Companion,  with  relatively 
little  thought  of  Him  as  Judge  or  Saviour. 

5.  It  also  seems  certain  that  there  was  much  informal 
praying  at  the  front.  Most  of  it  took  the  form  of  peti- 
tions for  physical  protection  and  sprang  out  of  a  new 
sense  of  dependence,  but  there  were  also  other  elements 
of  need  that  found  expression — need  for  moral  courage, 
for  forgiveness,  and  for  the  welfare  of  dear  ones. 

6.  The  problem  of  evil  and  of  God's  providence  was 
accentuated  by  the  war  and  was  the  main  intellectual 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  religious  faith. 

7.  There  was  a  decided  renewal  of  interest  in  im- 
mortality and  increased  belief  in  it.  There  was,  however, 
little  moral  or  Christian  content  in  the  conception. 

8.  The  soldier  had  experiences  that  made  more  in- 
telligible to  him  certain  Christian  ideas,  such  as  the 
meaning  of  the  Cross.  There  is  a  danger,  however,  of 
the  significance  of  the  Cross  of  Christ  being  reduced  in 
his  thinking  to  the  level  of  the  ordinary  suffering  of 
ordinary  men. 

9.  There  was  a  great  increase  of  Bible  carrying,  and 
probably  a  considerable  increase  in  reading  it.  The 
results  we  have  no  way  of  determining. 


124    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


10.  One  of  the  most  commonly  noted  observations  is 
the  increased  demand  for  "reaHty"  on  the  part  of  men 
who  have  been  face  to  face  with  the  grim  facts  of  war. 
By  "reality  in  religion"  they  seem  to  mean  mainly  prac- 
tical applicability  to  daily  life. 

II.    The  Effects  on  the  Churches  and  Churchmanship. 

1.  The  situation  in  the  army  encouraged  and  de- 
veloped the  indifference  to  denominational  lines  already 
noted  in  Part  I.  The  principle  of  unity,  however,  was 
primarily  comradeship  in  arms  rather  than  comradeship 
in  faith.  The  remarkable  cooperation  and  fellowship 
among  the  chaplains,  even  in  baptism  and  in  the  Com- 
munion, is  the  most  significant  factor  in  the  direction  of 
church  unity.  It  is  probable  also  that  among  laymen, 
in  spite  of  their  general  tendency  to  accept  denomina- 
tional divisions  and  to  attach  little  significance  to  them, 
the  definite  experience  of  a  cooperative  ministry  and  the 
recognition  of  the  validity  of  "orders"  and  "sacraments" 
of  other  church  bodies  than  their  own  will  have  some 
significance  for  civilian  life. 

2.  There  was  a  general  interruption  of  habits  of 
public  and  private  worship  and  a  widespread  disregard 
of  Sunday — perhaps,  however,  not  extended  long  enough 
to  have  serious  efifect  on  men  with  settled  religious  habits. 
On  the  other  hand  it  is  probable  that  many  men  were 
brought  into  touch  with  church  services  in  the  army  for 
the  first  time  in  a  long  period. 

3.  Public  worship  in  the  army  has  led  to  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  importance  of  simplicity,  directness  and 
intensity  in  services.  There  is  also  a  considerable  ten- 
dency among  ministers  who  were  in  the  army  to  attach 
larger  value  to  the  Communion. 

4.  The  importance  of  the  ministry  of  helpful  service 
to  the  practical  needs  of  men,  the  ministry  to  the  sick, 


SUMMARY  OF  PART  II  125 


and  the  care  of  the  dead,  received  new  emphasis  in  the 
army. 

III.    The  Effects  on  Moral  Life  and  Standards. 

1.  The  effects  of  the  war  on  moral  life  have  been  so 
diverse  and  depend  so  largely  on  local  conditions  that 
the  definite  conclusions  that  can  be  reached  are  very 
few.  Army  discipline  seems  to  have  been  beneficial  to 
many,  at  least  temporarily,  yet  to  others  it  has  probably 
been  harmful,  destroying  initiative  and  creating  a  merely 
legalistic  view  of  obedience.  So  far  as  the  present  evi- 
dence goes  men  do  not  generally  seem  to  have  been 
"brutalized"  by  warfare;  possibly  the  high  motives  of  the 
men  offset  this  tendency. 

2.  The  greatest  single  factor  in  affecting  moral 
standards  was  probably  the  corporate  character  of  army 
life.  There  was  a  heightening  of  group  morality — of 
regard  for  the  common  good. 

3.  Gambling,  profanity,  and  petty  stealing  decidedly 
increased,  a  result  due  largely  to  the  abnormal  conditions 
of  military  life. 

4.  The  circumstances  of  war  were  mainly  demoraliz- 
ing to  sexual  morality.  But  in  many  of  the  large  home 
camps  the  educational  and  recreational  programs  and 
the  repressive  measures  used  by  the  Government  resulted 
in  a  better  situation  than  is  found  in  many  civilian  com- 
munities. On  the  other  hand,  in  certain  areas  in  France 
there  was  unquestionably  serious  loss,  as  conditions  were 
far  less  favorable  and  government  jurisdiction  over  the 
neighborhood  was  not  possible. 

5.  There  is  a  sharp  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 
moral  effect  of  prophylaxis.  The  official  position  of  the 
Government,  while  approaching  the  subject  from  the 
medical  viewpoint,  upheld  continence  as  the  ideal  and 
interpreted  prophylaxis  as  a  protection  of  the  community 
rather  than  as  giving  to  the  offender  immunity  from  con- 


126    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


sequences  of  sin.  But  the  men  who  were  responsible 
for  carrying  out  the  Government's  policy  often  lost 
sight  of  this  point  of  view  and  the  fact  of  prophylaxis 
was  itself  sometimes  interpreted  as  official  sanction  of 
immorality. 


PART  III 
LESSONS  FOR  THE  CHURCH 


CHAPTER  VIII 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  FROM 
THE  ARMY 

It  is  the  purpose  of  Part  III  of  this  report  to  gather  up 
briefly  the  lessons  for  the  Church  that  stand  out  clearly 
from  the  foregoing  consideration  of  religion  in  the  army. 
To  treat  them  fully  would  be  to  enter  into  a  complete 
discussion  of  the  nature  and  function  of  the  Church — 
which  is  neither  possible  in  this  report  nor  within  its 
scope.  Various  aspects  of  the  Church's  duty  in  the  light 
of  the  war  experience  are  treated  in  other  reports  and 
pamphlets,  issued  or  to  be  issued  by  this  Committee.  We 
include  here  only  such  conclusions  as  seem  to  us  to  follow 
directly  from  the  facts  evident  in  the  army  or  the  in- 
fluences felt  there. 

Detailed  applications  of  the  lessons  here  pointed  out 
are  not  possible  without  entering  into  local  and  denomina- 
tional conditions.  It  is  clearly  beyond  the  scope  of  such 
an  interdenominational  group  as  the  Committee  on  the 
War  and  the  Religious  Outlook  to  make  such  applica- 
tions. The  following  discussion,  therefore,  is  confined  to 
suggestions  as  to  general  lines  along  which  we  believe 
thought  and  action  should  move.  Only  the  various 
church  organizations  and  local  pastors  can  give  practical 
effectiveness  to  what  is  here  suggested. 

I.   CONCERNING  CHURCH  MEMBERSHIP 

The  great  body  of  inactive  church  members  and  per- 
sons whose  allegiance  to  the  Church  is  only  nominal  calls 
for  a  candid  reexamination  of  the  meaning  of  church 


130    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


membership  and  of  the  actual  workings  of  the  various 
methods  of  admission  into  the  Christian  Church. 

Part  of  the  price  which  Christianity  pays  for  being 
"generally  accepted"  is  the  blurring  of  the  line  between 
Christian  and  non-Christian,  church  member  or  non- 
church  member.  "Being  a  Christian"  and  "belonging 
to  the  Church"  become  matters  of  inheritance,  like  na- 
tionality. The  evidence  furnished  by  the  army  has  shown 
how  great  that  "blurring"  is.  Men  hardly  know  where 
they  stand.  The  convictions  or  way  of  life  of  men  are 
frequently  no  indication  of  their  official  relation  to  the 
Christian  Society.  Men  within  the  Church  and  men  out- 
side it  have  little  conception  of  the  obligations  involved 
in  membership.^ 

We  recognize  the  great  difficulty  in  drawing  a  sharp 
line  between  what  constitutes  a  Christian  view  of  life 
and  what  does  not,  or  in  saying  how  good  a  man  must 
be  to  be  a  Christian.  And  we  realize  that  men  will  in- 
evitably diflfer  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the  Church 
should  be  regarded  primarily  as  a  fellowship  of  men  and 
women  who  have  attained  to  a  certain  way  of  living  and 
the  extent  to  which  it  should  be  thought  of  simply  as  a 
training-school  for  all  who  are  sufficiently  interested  in 
religion  to  care  to  become  associated  with  the  organized 
expression  of  it.  But  in  spite  of  these  difficulties  it  should 
be  possible  for  the  several  Churches  to  make  their  mem- 
bership more  significant  and  vital.  It  is  clear  that  there 
is  at  the  present  time  great  laxness  in  the  admission  of 
new  members  and  in  the  instruction  of  those  admitted, 
and  serious  leakage  from  the  existing  membership. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  this  situation  is  peculiar  to  any 
denomination,  or  that  it  is  the  accompaniment  of  any 
system  such  as  infant  baptism,  confirmation  or  profes- 

1  Cf.  the  Report  on  the  Chaplains'  Replies  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Ken- 
sington: "We  have  been  admitting  multitudes  into  the  Fellowship  of  the 
Church,  and  we  have  not  succeeded  in  providing  that  out  of  the  Body 
should  be  found  those  who  would  make  the  Fellowship  a  reality  for  those 
brought  into  it." 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  131 


sion  of  faith.  It  appears  that  all  the  Churches  are 
busily  engaged  in  creating  nominal  members. 

II.   CONCERNING  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION 
The  widespread  ignorance  of  the  meaning  of  Chris- 
tianity and  of  church  membership  demands  a  greatly 
increased  emphasis  on  the  teaching  office  of  the  Church. 

The  testimony  that  we  have  received  goes  to  show  that 
if  a  vote  were  taken  among  chaplains  and  other  religious 
workers  as  to  the  most  serious  failure  of  the  Church,  as 
evidenced  in  the  army,  a  large  majority  would  agree  that 
it  was  the  Church's  failure  as  a  teacher.  We  have  not 
succeeded  in  teaching  Christianity  to  our  own  members, 
let  alone  distributing  a  clear  knowledge  of  it  through  the 
community  at  large. ^  If  we  learn  our  lesson  the  result 
will  be  a  vastly  greater  emphasis  on  our  teaching  function. 
In  comparison  with  other  tasks  it  must  have  more 
thought,  more  energy,  more  financial  support  both  in  the 
local  church  and  in  the  denomination.  It  is  furthermore 
a  task  that  challenges  us  to  the  most  effective  interde- 
nominational cooperation  that  can  be  achieved. 

But  while  the  fact  that  Christianity  is  so  misunder- 
stood is  cause  for  the  most  careful  consideration  of  the 
teaching  function  of  the  Church,  it  is  also — strange  as 
the  remark  may  seem — a  great  ground  for  hope.  For 
does  it  not  mean  that  if  only  men  did  understand  how 
deep  and  vital  the  Christian  faith  really  is  they  would 
embrace  it?  If  the  rank  and  file  of  men  were  deliberately 
anti-Christian  we  might  well  despair.    If  they  are  indif- 

•  Cf.  the  conclusion,  based  on  entirely  different  evidence  from  ours, 
reached  by  the  British  interdenominational  committee  in  its  report  on  "The 
Army  and  Religion":  'That  probably  four-fifths  of  the  young  manhood  of 
our  country  should  have  little  or  no  vital  connection  with  any  of  the 
Churches,  and  that  behind  this  detachment  there  should  lie  so  deep  a  mis- 
understandinR  of  the  faiths  by  which  Christian  men  and  women  live,  and 
the  ideals  of  life  which  they  hold,  is,  perhaps,  the  most  salient  factor  of 
our  evidence.  Here  is  an  alarming  fact,  which  is,  surely,  clear  proof  that 
something  somewhere  has  gone  gravely  wrong,  and  that  the  hour  has  come 
when  we  must  discover  the  hidden  causes  of  the  evil  and  do  what  may  be 
done  to  set  things  right." 

The  Message  of  the  Canadian  Chaplains  Overseas  Military  Forces  to  the 
Churches  of  Canada  and  the  Anglican  Report  on  the  Chaplains'  Replies  to 
the  Lord  Bishop  of  Kensington  also  emphasize  "the  fact  of  a  very  wide- 
spread ignorance  about  even  the  simplest  truths  of  Christianity." 


132    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


ferent  to  the  Church  through  ignorance  and  misunder- 
standing we  may  surely  hope  that  m.ore  effective  teaching 
will  remove  the  causes  of  the  indifference  and  win  for 
the  Church  the  young  manhood  in  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  there  are  such  fine  qualities  on  which  to  build. 

1.  The  revelation  of  the  large  degree  of  failure  in  our 
religious  education  challenges  us  to  a  far  more  serious 
attention  to  the  Sunday  school  and  a  candid  examination 
of  its  curriculum,  methods  of  teaching  and  organisation. 

It  is  upon  the  Sunday  school  that  the  Protestant 
churches  have  mainly  depended  for  any  systematic  reli- 
gious education  of  the  children  and  youth.  It  is  found 
in  practically  every  church  in  every  community.  Yet 
the  ignorance  of  young  men  as  to  the  vital  meaning  of 
Christianity,  so  clearly  disclosed  in  the  cross  section  of 
youth  that  we  had  in  the  army,  is  an  indication  that  the 
Sunday  school  must  have  been  seriously  ineffective  in  its 
work. 

It  is  not  here  possible  to  point  out  in  detail  the  causes 
of  this  failure  in  the  Sunday  school.  Probably  the  chief 
factor  is  the  inadequate  time  at  its  disposal,  the  neces- 
sity of  crowding  the  entire  program  of  worship,  instruc- 
tion and  handwork  into  a  single  hour.  The  inadequate 
training  of  teachers,  the  lack  of  proper  courses  adapted 
to  various  ages  or  needs,  the  neglect  to  provide  sufficient 
opportunity  for  self-expression  in  service — these  and 
other  points  might  be  noted.  What  we  particularly  desire 
to  emphasize,  however,  is  that  we  must  regard  the  Sun- 
day school  with  vastly  more  seriousness  and  give  to  it  an 
attention  that  is  consonant  with  the  great  opportunity 
it  presents  for  training  in  Christian  living. 

It  also  seems  important  to  urge  upon  all  Christian 
workers  a  more  thorough  consideration  of  the  definite 
purposes  which  the  Sunday  school  should  aim  to  achieve. 
Too  often  its  function  seems  to  be  exhausted  in  simply 
teaching  Bible  stories,  securing  the  memorization  of  Bible 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  133 


passages  and  keeping  children  "interested"  and  off  the 
street.  We  need  to  realize  more  clearly  that  the  Sunday 
school  exists  fundamentally  to  teach  the  meaning  of  the 
Christian  religion  and  to  train  in  the  Christian  way  of 
living.  Chaplains  criticize  our  religious  education  on  the 
basis  of  its  results,  for  its  vagueness  and  failure  to  con- 
nect with  the  real  business  of  living.  Men  have  religious 
ideas,  but  these  ideas  have  not  sufficient  definition  or 
clarity  to  give  men  stability  or  an  assurance  of  knowing 
where  they  stand.  It  appears  to  be  quite  possible  for 
one  to  go  to  Sunday  school  and  church  considerably 
without  ever  gaining  a  clear  conception  of  what  Chris- 
tianity is.  And  in  the  case  of  great  numbers  the  Chris- 
tian view  of  life  not  only  fails  to  control  action  but  has 
the  air  of  being  something  that  is  perhaps  vaguely  true 
but  inapplicable.  Our  religious  education  must  be  more 
definite  and  more  vitally  connected  with  the  positive 
Christian  duties  and  the  Christian  way  of  life. 

2.  Training  in  intelligent  habits  of  private  and  public 
worship  should  be  greatly  stressed. 

The  army  experience  has  been  a  tremendous  demon- 
stration of  the  power  of  routine  in  carrying  men  over  the 
periods  when  impulse  is  exhausted  and  interest  is  at  low 
ebb,  and  in  giving  the  individual  the  stimulus  and  support 
of  group  action.  At  the  same  time  it  has  exerted  a  great 
strain  on  the  routine  of  religion,  on  the  habitual  practices 
of  private  and  public  worship.  The  evidence  is  that  very 
few  Christians  within  Protestantism  have  deeply  grooved 
and  intelligent  religious  habits.  Neither  public  worship 
nor  private  prayer  is  the  regular  practice  of  a  large 
number.  To  teach  the  use  of  these  habits,  guide  their 
development  and  give  them  the  strength  that  comes  from 
use  should  be  one  of  the  principal  efforts  in  religious 
education. 

We  find  ourselves  in  hearty  agreement  with  the  state- 
ment of  the  Archbishops'  First  Committee  of  Inquiry: 


134    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 

"A  Sunday  school  which  makes  no  systematic  provision 
for  training  in  worship  is  seriously  defective  and  the  defi- 
ciency should  receive  the  most  earnest  consideration  in 
view  not  only  of  the  general  principle  but  of  the  condi- 
tions of  the  day." 

3.  Two  false  conceptions  of  Christianity  should  he 
openly  and  convincingly  combated — that  it  is  a  selfish 
thing  and  that  it  is  a  negative  thing. 

The  best  way  to  combat  these  current  criticisms  of 
Christianity  as  taught  by  the  Church  is  to  see  to  it  that 
the  Christian  life  as  we  teach  it  consists  in  neither  of 
these  things,  but  in  positive  love  and  active  good  will. 
There  is  a  place  for  the  negatives,  the  "Thou  shalt  nots" 
as  restrictions  placed  on  the  man  who  would  gain  a  posi- 
tive ideal.  But  if  by  our  use  of  the  Ten  Commandments 
or  of  more  modern  prohibitions  we  are  training  men  to 
look  upon  these  as  the  primary  or  characteristic  element 
in  Christian  ethics,  we  are  justifying  the  criticism.  Sim- 
ilarly there  is  self-interest — not  selfish  interest — in  the 
Christian  motive.  He  who  would  find  his  life  must  lose 
it,  but  the  promise  is  that  he  shall  find  it.  That  is  quite 
different  from  making  the  Christian  goal  individual 
future  safety  or  selfish  inner  peace. 

4,  A  Christian  interpretation  of  sex  life  must  be  a 
regular  part  of  all  Christian  education. 

Whatever  the  percentage,  it  is  agreed  that  sexual  im- 
morality represents  the  gravest  problem  in  personal 
morality  presented  in  the  army.  There  has  been  a  great 
advance  in  physical  and  medical  education  on  this  sub- 
ject. There  should  be  a  corresponding  eflEort  on  the  part 
of  the  Church  to  give  its  membership  a  Christian  inter- 
pretation of  sex  life.  "Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery" 
is  not  enough.  Only  an  interpretation  of  sex  hfe  as  the 
physical  expression  of  spiritual  love  and  as  a  divine  crea- 
tive power  will  lift  it  to  a  Christian  level  and  give  men 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  135 


positive  motives  for  self-control.  But  this  cannot  be 
accomplished  if  we  postpone  all  serious  attention  to  the 
problem  until  the  age  of  young  manhood  is  reached. 
Education  in  the  Christian  ideals  of  sexual  relationships, 
v^fisely  adapted  to  the  developing  life  of  the  individual, 
must  become  an  integral  part  of  the  whole  process  of  reli- 
gious education. 

5.  The  religious  instruction  and  training  given  in  the 
home  outlives  all  other  religious  education.  In  directing 
or  controlling  that  influence  lies  our  greatest  opportunity. 

"The  faith  they  have  came  from  home  for  the  most 
part  and  generally  from  a  good  mother  who  taught  them." 
The  parish  minister  discovered  long  ago  that  the  idealism 
and  religious  interest  of  parents  is  at  its  height  in  their 
thought  of  their  children.  The  minister  in  the  service 
has  been  impressed  again  and  again  with  the  fact  that  the 
idealism  and  faith  of  men  so  often  center  in  their  home 
and  especially  in  the  mother.^  It  is  in  the  relationship  of 
parent  and  child  that  by  far  the  greatest  opportunity 
for  religious  instruction  and  training  lies. 

But  with  the  development  of  specialized  agencies  of 
religious  education  there  seems  to  have  come  a  lessening 
of  definite  or  systematic  education  of  children  in  the 
home.  The  Church  needs  to  provide  courses  of  study 
for  parents,  plans  for  family  worship,  suggestions  as  to 
the  cultivation  of  right  attitudes  towards  others,  and  in 
other  ways  to  stimulate  and  guide  and  help  parents  in  the 
religious  education  of  children.  If  we  can  center  atten- 
tion on  the  primary  obligation  of  the  home  in  religious 
training  we  shall  be  doing  the  most  effective  thing  possi- 
ble in  the  development  of  Christians.  The  renewing  of 
the  religious  life  and  spiritual  atmosphere  of  the  home 

'  C/.  the  statement  in  the  British  Report  on  "The  Army  and  Religion": 
"Nothing  impresses  those  who  have  worked  among  our  men  more  than 
their  deep  and  passionate  love  of  home.  It  is  abundantly  clear  that  of  all 
the  vital  influences  moulding  their  characters  for  good,  none  is  today  like 
this  in  its  refining  and  humanising  power.  It  is  in  fact  the  key  of  the 
whole  spiritual  situation." 


136    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


is  at  the  root  of  our  task.  If  we  fail  here  we  shall  fail 
everywhere. 

III.   CONCERNING  FUNDAMENTAL  TEACHINGS 

The  fundamental  doctrines  of  the  Church  need  to  he 
"revitalised" — taught  in  such  a  way  that  they  shall  ap- 
pear as  real  explanations  of  the  meaning  of  life  and  the 
answer  to  men's  practical  needs. 

The  evidence  presented  in  this  report  has  shown  clearly 
that  great  numbers  of  men  think  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
Church  as  something  perhaps  vaguely  true  but  abstract 
and  formal,  remote  from  their  real  problems  and  their 
daily  needs.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
there  is,  as  we  have  found,  a  general  tendency  to  think 
that  religion  ought  to  be  merely  a  matter  of  conduct  and 
service — that  "what  you  believe  doesn't  matter."  We 
have  to  make  it  clear  that  it  is  just  this  lack  of  vital  behef 
that  matters  terribly — make  them  see  that  genuine  and 
definite  faith  in  a  Christian  God,  in  immortality,  in  the 
Lordship  and  Saviourhood  of  Christ,  in  salvation  from 
sin,  in  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  the  earth, 
is  the  very  foundation  of  the  noblest  living  and  the 
highest  service. 

Since  it  has  been  emphasized  again  and  again  in  this 
study  that  there  is  a  widespread  misunderstanding  as  to 
what  Christianity  really  means,  it  is  important  here  to 
inquire  whether  this  misunderstanding  is  not  due,  in  part 
at  least,  to  our  failure  to  present  the  fundamental  Chris- 
tian truths  in  a  fresh  and  living  way. 

There  are  certain  emphases  that  need  particularly  to  be 
made  in  our  teaching,  in  the  light  of  what  we  have  found 
in  the  army.  The  following  paragraphs  will  consider 
some  of  them : 

1.  The  generally  accepted  beliefs  in  God  and  immor- 
tality need  to  he  given  a  definitely  Christian  content  and 
practical  effectiveness. 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  137 


The  present  problem  of  the  Church  is  not  so  much  to 
create  belief  in  God  and  immortality,  at  least  intellectual 
assent,  as  to  fill  out  and  develop  a  belief  that  is  general, 
and  above  all  to  make  clear  and  emphatic  the  moral  im- 
plications. Belief  in  a  god  is  widely  distributed.  Living, 
effective  faith  in  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  is  rare.  Vague  belief  in  a  general  Providence, 
somehow  beneficent,  is  common.  But  of  God  as  a 
positive  Other  Will  whose  purpose  claims  our  wills  and 
whose  righteousness  judges  our  disloyalty  men  know 
little.  And  in  the  case  of  immortality  the  same  lack  of 
moral  content  is  apparent.  The  traditional  imagery  of 
heaven  and  hell  has  lost  much  of  its  former  convincing- 
ness and  with  it  has  gone  much  of  the  sense  of  moral 
alternatives — of  judgment  to  come. 

2.  "The  Kingdom  of  God"  should  be  placed  among 
the  major  ideas  which  the  Church  is  seeking  to  implant 
and  propagate. 

During  recent  years  the  Kingdom  of  God,  conceived 
of  as  the  rule  of  God  on  earth,  has  gained  an  increasingly 
prominent  place  in  professional  Christian  thought.  For 
many  it  has  come  to  be  the  central  idea  in  the  Christian 
scheme.  In  view  of  this  development  it  is  interesting 
that  in  our  army  a  very  general  ignorance  of  the  term 
is  indicated.*  It  should  also  be  noted  that  it  is  the  lack 
of  any  adequate  conception  of  the  social  mission  of 
Christianity  that  seems  to  underlie  very  largely  the  ob- 
servation, so  constantly  reported,  that  the  men  do  not 
understand  the  meaning  of  Christianity.  This  being  the 
case  there  is  serious  danger  of  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  becoming  professional  and  academic  without  liv- 
ing content  in  the  minds  of  average  Christians. 

*  Cf.  the  conclusion  of  the  British  Report  on  "The  Army  and  Religion": 
"One  of  the  questions  that  we  put  under  the  head  of  'Points  of  Contact' 
was,  what  do  men  think  of  the  Kingdom  of  God?  To  this  there  has  been 
practically  no  answer  at  all.  The  men  of  whom  we  are  thinking  do  not 
seern  to  know  anything  about  it.  They  do  not  seem  to  have  any  idea  that 
Christianity  has  a  gospel  for  all  humanity  and  looks  out  upon  the  reign  of 
God  in  human  society." 


138    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


3.  In  view  of  the  vagueness  of  impressions  as  to  the 
life  and  character  of  Jesus  Christ  there  is  need  for  the 
most  careful  thought  and  most  devoted  effort  to  present 
Him  in  His  fulness. 

It  has  been  noted  elsewhere  in  this  report  that  in  the 
raphes  of  almost  all  of  our  correspondents  there  has 
been  a  strange  lack  of  direct  evidence  as  to  what  the  men 
think  of  Christ.  The  almost  inevitable  conclusion  is 
that  the  thought  of  the  men  is  generally  too  vague  to 
make  it  really  possible  to  record  it.  And  this  inference 
is,  in  a  general  way,  borne  out  by  such  evidence  as  we 
have  received  upon  this  point.  It  is  reported  that  the  men 
"respect  Christ,"  or  think  of  Him  as  "the  best  man  that 
ever  lived,"  but  there  is  little  testimony  that  leads  us 
to  believe  that  this  general  attitude  of  respect  rests  on  any 
definite  idea  either  of  His  way  of  living  or  the  qualities 
of  His  character  that  make  him  the  Lord  of  all  good 
life  and  give  Him  recreative  power  in  the  lives  of  men. 

Do  we  not  here  have  our  supreme  opportunity  to  give 
to  Christian  teaching  the  note  of  "reality"  which  the 
soldier  is  reported  to  demand  ?  If  Christian  faith  seems 
vague  and  remote,  inapplicable  to  the  practical  problems 
that  men  meet  and  impracticable  in  daily  life,  surely  we 
need  most  of  all  to  present  the  historical  figure  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  all  His  fulness  as  the  Son  of  Man,  in  whom 
the  truths  that  we  hold  and  the  ideal  to  which  we  are 
committed  are  given  objective  reality  by  expression  in 
human  life. 

4.  In  view  of  the  loss  of  meaning  in  the  terminology 
of  salvation  we  need  a  clearer  presentation  of  the  positive 
content  of  the  doctrine  and  a  thoughtful  consideration  of 
the  real  motives  and  interests  and  experiences  to  which 
we  must  appeal. 

If  men  are  interested  in  what  we  mean  by  salvation  and 
sin  and  atonement,  they  do  not  know  them  under  these 
names.    The  common  words  and  phrases  that  have  in 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  139 


the  past  expressed  the  great  truths  of  the  Gospel  have 
lost  vital  meaning  for  many.  We  cannot  save  by  correct 
phrases.  We  must  rediscover  for  ourselves  and  express 
in  very  plain  language  what  we  do  mean  by  salvation.* 
Is  it  future  safety,  or  inner  peace,  or  liberation  from  the 
control  of  evil  desires,  or  the  power  to  do  good  and  be 
good,  or  the  "new  social  order,"  or  union  with  God  ? 

The  demand  of  the  soldier  for  "reality"  is  a  fair  de- 
mand. It  challenges  us  to  express  our  theological  con- 
ceptions in  terms  that  are  readily  understood,  in  a  way 
that  makes  clear  that  they  are  explanations  of  his  own 
best  experiences  and  convictions  and  that  Christian  truths 
have  immediate  application  to  the  problems  that  he  is 
facing  every  day.  So  far  as  traditional  terminology  or 
form  of  expression  are  foreign  to  our  manner  of  thinking 
in  the  present  day,  the  responsibility  sharply  confronts 
us  to  find  terminology  that  is  in  keeping  with  modern 
knowledge  and  experience. 

5.  We  have  in  the  experience  of  the  soldiers,  and  in 
the  knowledge  of  that  experience  among  many  others,  an 
unusual  point  of  contact  and  starting  point  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  many  great  Christian  ideas  such  as  Sacrifice, 
Burden-Bearing,  the  Cross,  Atonement,  Brotherhood, 
Providence,  Immortality,  Dependence  on  God. 

"Hardly  anything,  I  believe,  will  be  more  fateful  for 
the  religious  history  of  the  next  generation  than  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Church  in  expressing  its  own  knowledge  of 
religion,  or  of  Christianity  in  particular,  so  that  the  re- 
turning soldier  and  others  can  recognize  it  as  something 
of  which  their  own  experience  has  already  spoken, 
whether  or  not  it  was  known  by  that  name."®  From  the 
very  beginning  the  Church  has  found  in  the  experiences 

'  Cf.  the  resolution  adopted  at  the  Conference  of  Australian  chaplains  in 
May,  1919:  "In  particular  [this  conference]  considers  that  the  seriousness 
of  sin  and  the  need  of  redemption  through  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  require 
emphasizing  but  in  order  that  those  truths  may  be  presented  more  effectively 
they  should  be  delivered  from  their  more  or  less  traditional  interpretations 
and  applied  to  the  actual  life  and  thought  of  the  present  generation." 

•  W.  E.  Hocking,  "Religion  in  War-Time,"  Atlantic  Monthly. 


140    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


of  military  life  and  war  helpful  analogies  for  the  under- 
standing of  religion.  They  assuredly  need  to  be  used 
with  restraint  and  without  sentimentality  if  we  are  not 
to  alienate  men  who  have  experienced  the  original.  But 
they  are  a  great  common  ground  of  understanding  for 
this  generation.  Men  who  have  discovered  that  they 
belong  to  their  country  are  better  prepared  to  understand 
that  they  belong  to  God.  Men  who  have  known  complete 
obedience  have  an  introduction  to  what  God's  will  de- 
mands of  man's  will.  The  brotherhood  and  democracy 
of  the  ranks  at  its  best  is  a  fleeting  experience  of  what 
the  Church  seeks  in  its  own  fellowship.  Men  have  known 
the  necessity  by  which  the  finest  and  fittest  carry  the 
burden  of  the  disloyal  and  unfit.  And  they  have  been 
brought  face  to  face  in  a  new  way  with  the  ancient  prob- 
lems of  Evil  and  Providence. 

We  need  to  realize,  at  the  same  time,  that  there  are 
dangers  in  approaching  Christianity  through  the  experi- 
ences of  war  that  we  must  guard  against — perhaps  even 
counteract — such  as  the  identifying  of  religion  with  pa- 
triotism, the  militarizing  of  Christ,  the  confusion  of 
American  democracy  with  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

IV.   CONCERNING  PUBLIC  WORSHIP 

The  fact  that  in  spite  of  all  the  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  public  worship  in  the  army  the  instinct  for  it  was 
still  so  unmistakable  ought  to  give  us  a  new  appreciation 
of  its  ineradicable  character  in  human  life  and  lead  us  to 
new  emphasis  on  its  significance. 

The  unanimity  with  which  chaplains  have  testified  to 
the  response  of  men  to  dignified,  quiet  and  reverent  wor- 
ship is  remarkable.  Overseas  there  were  of  course  great 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  holding  services  in  an  atmos- 
phere conducive  to  worship.  Barns,  dug-outs  or  shell- 
torn  fields  often  constituted  the  setting.  There  were 
also,  as  noted  elsewhere  in  this  report,  constant  distrac- 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  141 


tions.  Sunday  was  often  the  same  as  every  other  day. 
Yet  in  spite  of  all  the  difficulties  the  impulse  to  corporate 
worship  was  not  destroyed.  We  have  a  new  apprecia- 
tion of  its  value  whenever  it  is  so  conducted  as  to  carry 
with  it  a  note  of  genuineness  and  reality. 

1.  The  army  experience  has  demonstrated  both  the 
great  value  of  the  short,  simple,  direct,  'hard-hitting'  ser- 
vice, and  also  the  imde  appeal  of  the  Communion. 

In  the  services  at  home  there  are  other  interests  and 
tastes  to  be  considered  besides  those  of  young  men.  But 
the  services  which  particularly  appealed  to  men  in  the 
army  were  in  the  main  shorter,  more  simple,  more  in- 
formal, more  direct  than  the  customary  services  in  our 
churches.  The  combining  of  entertainment  and  amuse- 
ment with  worship,  however,  which  was  so  often  carried 
out  in  the  army,  does  not  seem  to  have  made  a  permanent 
appeal  to  the  men  who  appreciated  in  any  adequate  degree 
the  significance  of  worship.'' 

Side  by  side  with  this  responsiveness  to  the  simple  and 
informal  service  is  noted  the  appeal  of  the  Communion 
servnce.  The  interest  of  men  in  it  was  at  least  sufficiently 
great  to  urge  us  to  consider  afresh  whether  within  Prot- 
estantism that  sacrament  has  not  been  too  much  neg- 
lected. Our  experience  with  services  in  the  army  would 
seem  to  lead  us  to  an  appreciation  of  the  need  for  elas- 
ticity in  public  worship,  and  perhaps  also  to  something 
of  a  rapprochement  between  the  liturgical  and  the  spon- 
taneous types. 

2.  Certain  criticisms  of  church  services  are  prevalent 
— that  they  are  unintelligible,  artificial  in  tone,  "unreal," 
feminine  in  atmosphere,  too  long,  not  heartily  congrega- 
tional. 

The  charges  made  by  soldiers  against  our  church  ser- 

'  C/.  the  statement  in  MacLean  and  Sclater's  "God  and  the  Soldier": 
"While  we  may  easily  attract  the  thoughtless  by  cheaper  methods  (provided 
the  local  picture  house  is  not  open),  we  shall  alienate  those  who  are  the 
backbone  of  the  nation,  if  we  turn  away  from  the  dignity  which  should 
mark  our  approach  to  God." 


142    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


vices  are  not  war  products,  but  they  were  more  frankly 
expressed  and  more  commonly  heard  in  the  army.*  Sol- 
diers were  not  hesitant  in  demanding  that  services  be 
natural  and  thoroughly  sincere,  and  not  too  long;  that 
language  be  plain-spoken  and  clear ;  that  the  minister  and 
choir  shall  not  "do  it  all."  A  chaplain  with  a  wide  ex- 
perience has  recently  written :  "There  is  among  the  men 
a  widespread  resentment  of  sentimentality  in  worship 
and  of  'the  cult  of  the  pretty-pretty.'  ....  To  put  it 
in  somewhat  more  philosophic  terms  than  they  use,  it 
would  seem  that  they  condemn  contemporary  worship  on 
two  grounds :  first,  that  it  is  vicarious ;  second,  that  it  is 

introspective  They  miss  the  corporate  note  in 

devotion.  Since  they  are  healthy  minded  young  things, 
they  resent  having  their  spiritual  attention  turned  in- 
ward."* 

3.  In  preaching  it  is  charged  that  Christian  ministers 
are  frequently  uninteresting,  antiquarian,  artificial  and 
tiresomely  long.  Self-examination  is  in  order.  The  pres- 
ent emphasis  on  "reality"  demands  a  special  striving 
after  importance,  intelligibility,  sincerity  and  contempo- 
rary application  in  preaching. 

The  demands  made  upon  our  preaching  are  in  large 
part  those  made  upon  our  church  services  in  general. 
The  faults  criticized  are  in  the  main  the  faults  of  some- 
thing that  has  grown  conventional  and  lost  its  vitality. 
That  element  in  our  regular  worship  which  has  been 
most  free  for  the  expression  of  new  life  seems  to  have 
grown  old.  We  need  to  recall  that  there  is  nothing  sacred 
in  the  customary  length,  form,  terminology  or  tones  of 
preaching.    Even  this  institution  is  made  for  men.  It 

*  Cf.  the  following  statement  in  the  Messagre  of  the  Canadian  Chaplains 
Overseas  Military  Forces  to  the  Churches  of  Canada:  "Men  have  grown 
impatient  with  the  least  suspicion  of  insincerity  in  our  public  devotions. 
They  feel  that  many  of  our  hymns  and  prayers  do  not  really  express  their 
desires.  The  very  phraseology  is  foreign  to  their  thought  and  speech.  They 
will  not  continue  to  repeat  forms,  no  matter  how  ancient  and  sanctified  they 
may  he,  if  these  are  no  longer  a  vehicle  for  the  soul's  true  longing." 

"  B.  I.  Bell,  "The  Church  and  the  Civilian  Young  Man,"  Atlantic 
Monthly. 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  143 


must  be  judged  by  the  extent  to  which  it  ministers  to  the 
practical  religious  needs  of  men. 

Preachers  need  to  give  serious  attention  to  these  criti- 
cisms, not  in  order  to  be  popular,  but  in  order  to  reach 
the  rank  and  file  of  men  more  effectively  with  our  mes- 
sage. We  must  talk  about  things  that  matter,  that  make 
a  difference,  that  honestly  count  in  the  religious  life  of 
average  men  and  women.  We  must  make  sure  we  are 
making  ourselves  understood  by  simple-minded  people. 
We  must  inwardly  and  transparently  mean  what  we  say 
by  our  words  and  our  tones.  And  we  must  show  clear 
contemporary  application  of  the  sermons  which  we 
preach  to  the  lives  that  are  now  being  lived.  "Reality" 
as  applied  to  preaching  means  that  the  tones  of  the 
preacher  shall  express  his  real  feelings,  that  the  things  he 
preaches  about  shall  represent  his  fresh  experience  and 
conviction,  that  the  interests  to  which  he  appeals  are  real 
interests  of  his  hearers,  that  the  things  he  emphasizes  as 
important  shall  be  really  important.  On  all  of  these 
points  chaplains  tell  us  that  young  men  are  severe  judges. 

V.   CONCERNING  MORAL  LIFE  AND  STANDARDS 

1.  The  virtues  and  vices  practiced,  admired  or  toler- 
ated by  men  generally  indicate  what  we  have  to  build 
upon,  avoid  and  overcome  in  the  presentation  and  de- 
velopment of  Christ iati  character. 

In  seeking  to  develop  the  virtues  of  courage,  generosity, 
unselfishness,  persistent  cheerfulness,  straightforward- 
ness, humility,  loyalty,  devotion  to  home,  we  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  an  existing  admiration  for  these  qualities. 
The  problem  is  not  to  create  them  or  the  love  of  them, 
but  to  bring  out  their  implications  more  completely  and 
show  that  the  natural  or  military  virtues  are  fulfilled  in 
Christ,  and  that  He  is  indeed  the  "Lord  of  All  Good 
Life."  That  men  have  shown  many  of  these  virtues  in 
war  should  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  same  men  are 


144    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


frequently  lax  in  the  matter  of  sexual  morality,  drink, 
gamble,  and  lack  in  a  persistent  will  to  serve  the  com- 
munity for  which  they  have  fought.  Perhaps  the  most 
effective  way  to  attack  these  vices  is  to  indicate  their 
conflict  with  the  virtues  that  men  admire.  The  vices 
most  to  be  feared  in  ourselves,  as  being  most  sure  to  repel 
men  from  the  cause  we  represent,  are  cowardice,  close- 
fistedness,  gloominess,  snobbishness,  swelled-headedness, 
hypocrisy. 

2.  It  is  especially  important  in  the  presentation  of 
Christian  character  and  in  our  lives  as  Christians  to  avoid 
a  one-sided  ethic — whereby  the  morality  of  self-control 
and  abstinence  overshadows  the  morality  of  the  good 
neighbor. 

We  would  all  agree  that  in  Christianity  the  law  of  love 
and  neighborliness  is  primary  and  characteristic.  We 
must  not  permit  men,  self-controlled  and  above  reproach 
in  matters  of  personal  habits,  sex,  temperance,  language, 
etc.,  and  at  the  same  time,  hard,  censorious,  close,  selfish, 
proud  in  their  relations  with  their  fellows,  to  represent 
the  Christian  ideal.  We  must  make  it  clear  both  in  exam- 
ple and  precept  that  Christianity  means  an  active  life  of 
love  and  good  will  and  brotherhood. 

3.  One  of  the  largest  factors  in  alienating  men  from 
the  Church  or  in  winning  them  to  it  is.  the  lives  of  church 
members. 

It  is  probably  true  that  it  is  not  so  much  the  Church 
itself  that  is  criticized  as  members  of  the  Church.  "It 
seems  to  many  men,  and  those  the  most  worth  while, 
that  the  moral  standards  of  church  people  are  too  low. 
....  Christians  do  not  strike  them  as  conspicuously 
more  kind,  more  charitable,  more  loving,  and  more  sacri- 
ficing than  other  men  and  women, — particularly  more 
sacrificing."^**    It  has  been  said  of  the  early  Christians 

"B.  I.  Bell,  "The  Church  and  the  Civilian  Young  Man,"  Atlantic 
Monthly. 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  145 


that  they  "outHved  the  pagan,"  "outdied"  him,  and  "out- 
thought"  him.  We  must  "outlive"  the  majority.  That  is 
the  best  evangelism. 

4.  The  army  experience  has  demonstrated  the  effec- 
tiveness of  vice  suppression  rather  than  vice  regulation, 
and  shown  the  possibilities  when  the  problem  is  attacked 
in  earnest. 

On  the  basis  of  the  war  experience  in  successful  vice 
suppression  the  Church  has  the  strongest  grounds  for  co- 
operating vigorously  with  all  who  are  attacking  directly 
and  unrelentingly  commercial  prostitution.  The  policy  of 
the  Government  in  dealing  with  prostitution,  as  is  well 
known,  was  not  regulation  but  suppression.  "White 
zones"  were  created  around  the  training  camps  in  this 
country  and  vigorous  measures  were  taken  to  secure  the 
strict  enforcement  of  the  law.  In  the  majority  of  com- 
munities this  was  done  with  marked  success.  The  expe- 
rience of  the  country  during  the  war  has  shown  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  suppression  of  vice  when  the  problem 
is  undertaken  honestly  and  energetically. 

On  May  7,  1918,  General  Pershing  wrote  to  Lord 
Milner  as  follows :  "I  have  heard  with  great  satisfaction 
of  the  recent  decision  of  the  British  war  office  that  the 
licensed  houses  of  prostitution  are  to  be  put  out  of 
bounds  in  the  British  Expeditionary  Force.  Many  of  us 
who  have  experimented  with  licensed  prostitution  or  kin- 
dred measures,  hoping  thereby  to  minimize  the  physical 
evils,  have  been  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  they  are 
really  ineffective.  Abraham  Flexner  has  argued  the  case 
so  convincingly  that  on  the  scientific  side  it  seems  to  me 
there  is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  what  he  terms 
'abolition'  as  distinguished  from  'regulation'  is  the  only 
effective  mode  of  combating  this  age-long  evil."^^  With 
such  testimony  Christians  may  attack  this  problem  with 
greater  assurance. 

"  Quoted  by  Raymond  Fosdick,  "The  Fight  Against  Venereal  Disease," 
Th4  New  Republic. 


146    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


5.  Any  move  towards  the  extension  of  prophylaxis — 
or  early  preventive  treatment,  before  the  development 
of  disease — to  civilian  communities  should  be  examined 
with  great  care.  The  Church  cannot  give  its  support  to 
such  a  proposal.  The  emphasis  must  be  upon  measures 
to  prevent  immorality  rather  than  to  prevent  disease. 

As  a  result  of  the  great  success  of  prophylaxis  in  reduc- 
ing venereal  disease  in  the  army  it  has  already  been  sug- 
gested that  this  method  of  attack  should  be  extended  to 
civilian  communities.  It  is  very  important  for  the  Church 
to  understand  what  is  involved. 

There  are  at  least  three  distinct  medical  policies  possi- 
ble in  attacking  venereal  disease. 

There  is  first  of  all  the  possibility  of  giving  medical 
prophylaxis  in  package  form  to  the  man  who  is  going  to 
the  brothel.  Very  few  would  now  advocate  such  a  policy. 
From  a  medical  standpoint  it  is  dubious  because  self- 
treatment  is  liable  to  be  careless.  From  the  moral  stand- 
point most  would  agree  that  "the  sale  of  indulgences  for 
future  sins  was  no  worse  than  the  selling  or  giving  of 
prophylaxis  beforehand."  This  was  not  the  practice  in 
the  American  army. 

The  policy  in  the  army  was  that  of  compulsory  early 
preventive  treatment  after  exposure.  Even  under  army 
conditions  this  practice  was  far  from  satisfactory  from 
a  medical  point  of  view.  In  spite  of  the  vigilance  of 
medical  authorities,  soldiers  were  often  careless  or  wholly 
violated  the  rules.  And  the  moral  risks  were  more 
serious.  Its  effect  may  well  be  coarsening  and  cynical 
unless  the  administration  is  carefully  guarded.  It  must 
be  administered  in  privacy  by  high-minded  men.  And 
patients  must  "be  given  to  understand  that  prophylaxis 
is  not  intended  to  give  immunity  to  fornicators  and 
adulterers  in  their  uncleanness,  but  to  protect  innocent 
men  and  women  against  awful  contamination  and  dis- 
ease."^^  Any  extension  of  this  procedure  to  civilian  com- 

"  Chaplain  Brent's  Report  to  the  Adjutant  General  of  the  U.  S.  A. 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  147 


munities  would  involve  additional  difficulties.  The  army 
was  a  one-sex  community  where  frequent  compulsory 
medical  examination  was  possible.  And  men  were  re- 
quired to  give  full  facts  as  to  the  source  and  place  of  ex- 
posure for  use  in  law  enforcement.  In  civilian  communi- 
ties compulsory  prophylaxis  would  of  course  be  out  of  the 
question.  The  voluntary  cooperation  of  the  patients 
would  be  necessary.  And  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to 
expect  prostitutes  to  report  for  treatment  if  the  informa- 
tion gained  were  to  be  used  in  law  enforcement.  A  sys- 
tem of  compulsory  early  prophylaxis,  to  be  successful, 
might  become  a  new  experiment  in  the  recognition  and 
regulation  of  vice,  against  which  we  ought  to  have  turned 
our  backs  once  for  all. 

A  third  policy  is  the  provision  of  ample  clinical  facili- 
ties for  the  treatment  of  those  who  develop  venereal  dis- 
ease, innocently  or  guiltily.  Such  a  step  the  Church  can 
certainly  heartily  support. 

The  Church  needs  to  recognize  clearly  that  the  em- 
phasis must  be,  not  on  prophylaxis  to  prevent  disease,  but 
upon  a  program  to  prevent  immorality.  The  proposal  for 
civilian  prophylaxis  as  the  important  factor  in  social 
hygiene  should  be  vigorously  opposed.  The  emphasis 
must  be  placed  on  the  enforcement  of  laws,  sound  edu- 
cation, adequate  recreation,  with  provision  for  the  whole- 
some association  of  the  sexes,  and,  above  all,  on  the  moral 
issue  involved.^^ 

6.  The  renewed  evidence  of  the  prevalence  of  vene- 
real disease  demands  a  reconsideration  of  the  Church's 
attitude  towards  the  marriage  of  any  who  cannot  secure 
a  medical  certificate  of  freedom  from  venereal  disease. 

We  believe  that  the  Churches  in  America  should  give 
earnest  thought  to  the  following  conclusion  to  which  the 

"  For  information  concerning  the  modern  program  of  attack  upon 
venereal  disease  through  law  enforcement,  education  and  adequate  recrea- 
tion, consult  the  American  Social  Hygiene  Association,  105  West  40th  Street, 
New  York. 


148    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


war  experience  has  led  a  prominent  British  chaplain/* 
"that  the  Church  of  England  should  take  the  lead  by 
refusing  to  'solemnize'  syphilitic  marriages that  this  is 
no  real  hardship  or  injustice  on  any  man;  that  a  man 
who  rates  God's  blessing  through  the  Church  on  his  mar- 
ried life  sufficiently  high  will  consider  it  well  worth  the 
inconvenience  of  troubling  to  obtain  a  doctor's  certificate 
for  a  clean  bill  of  health;  that  even  if  he  is  not  pro- 
nounced fit  he  can  avail  himself  of  the  means  provided 
to  effect  a  cure — a  step  which  otherwise  a  false  and  self- 
ish modesty  might  have  prevented  him  from  taking;  that 
there  can  be  no  blessing  of  God  on  a  tainted  union,  for, 
whether  or  not  either  of  the  parties  is  guiltily  responsible 
for  the  taint,  it  is  one  that  may  affect  the  children  yet 
unborn,  and  therefore  the  marriage  at  that  time  is  not 
such  as  to  win  God's  approval ;  that  the  Church  in  so 
insisting  would  be  taking  a  perfectly  reasonable  and 
legitimate  course  in  removing  the  mockery  of  many 
'Christian  marriages'  of  today ;  that  a  marriage  in  Church 
is  meant  to  be  and  should  be  a  sincere  act  of  prayer — by 
people  who  believe  in  God — for  His  blessing  on  them  at 
the  time  of  the  most  important  change  of  their  whole 
lives ;  that  people  to  whom  these  conditions  for  any  rea- 
sons do  not  apply  should  only  be  thankful  that  the 
Church  at  last  does  not  allow  them  to  make  humbugs  of 
themselves,  even  for  an  hour,  nor  a  mockery  of  a  religion 
in  which  they  do  not  believe,  and  that  they  should  seek 
legal  union  elsewhere ;  finally  that  it  is  no  wild  prophecy 
to  say  that  eventually  the  State  will  insist  on  a  clean  bill 
of  health  in  those  who  propose  to  beget  children,  and  that 
those  who  love  their  Church  would  like  to  see  her  take  the 
lead  in  this  instead  of  being  compelled  years  hence  to 
adopt  a  Christian  principle  from  a  secular  authority  for 
purely  material  reasons."^' 

"  T.  W.  Pym,  "Papers  from  Picardy." 

"  Gonorrhea  as  well  as  syphilis  ought  no  doubt  to  be  included  in  any 
adequate  consideration  of  the  subject. 

"  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  a  conference  of  Australian  Chaplains  on 
May  1  and  2,  1919,  adopted,  among  other  resolutions,  a  recommendation  that 


\ 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  149 


VI.   CONCERNING  RESPONSIBILITY  FOR  THE 
COMMUNITY 

1.  The  small  mimber  of  real  Christians  and  active 
Church  members  and  the  general  ignorance  as  to  what 
Christianity  is  shows  the  great  need  for  a  renezued  effort 
to  present  Christianity  to  the  unchurched  majority  in 
an  intelligible,  appealing,  insistent  way. 

In  an  age  of  propaganda  it  does  not  appear  that  we 
Christians  have  succeeded  in  bringing  our  faith  or  our 
program  before  people  generally.  We  have  been  too 
satisfied  with  ministering  to  the  religious  life  of  our  own 
immediate  constituency  and  have  had  too  little  sense  of 
responsibility  for  the  whole  community.  Numerous 
agencies  are  now  succeeding  in  bringing  their  principles 
and  objectives  and  appeals  to  the  attention  of  the  general 
public.  The  public  may  not  fully  respond,  but  they  are 
at  least  aware  of  a  continuous  pressure,  and  know  what 
they  are  rejecting  or  being  indifferent  to.  The  Church 
both  in  its  larger  and  in  its  local  expressions,  should  be 
sufficiently  devoted  and  inventive  to  find  means  of 
presenting  the  challenge  of  Christianity  to  the  semi-Chris- 
tian majority.  We  have  not  begun  to  do  our  part  until 
men  generally  know  what  they  are  rejecting  or  being 
indifferent  to  in  remaining  apart  from  positive  Chris- 
tianity. They  must  be  made  to  feel  the  pressure  of  a 
continuous,  intelligent,  consecrated  propaganda. 

What  we  are  urging  is  a  "missionary"  spirit  and  a 
"missionary"  undertaking  in  the  largest  sense  of  the  term. 
We  need  a  deeper  conviction  that  we  have  a  Gospel  that 
is  absolutely  indispensable  to  human  life  and  that  we 
cannot  be  satisfied  till  we  have  given  our  fullest  energy 
and  best  resources  of  both  personality  and  material  means 
to  bring  that  Gospel  effectively  to  the  hearts  of  all.  And 
the  testimony  of  the  chaplains  gives  us  new  assurance 
of  the  responsiveness  of  large  numbers  of  men  now  on 

"a  medical  certificate  of  freedom  from  hereditary  disease  be  required  of 
those  about  to  marry." 


150    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


the  fringes  of  organized  religion  to  the  fundamental 
Christian  truths  when  presented  in  a  way  that  really 
shows  their  practical  applicability  to  daily  life. 

2.  The  experience  of  fellowship  in  the  army  has 
shown  the  possibility  of  it  and  increased  the  demand 
for  it.  The  Church  fails  to  be  more  effective  in  promot- 
ing brotherhood  and  democratic  fellowship  in  the  com- 
munity because  of  the  lack  of  these  qualities  in  the  Church 
itself. 

It  has  been  noted  in  the  first  section  of  this  report  that 
there  is  a  common  criticism  of  the  Church  not  only  be- 
cause it  fails  to  do  anything  effective  to  remove  social 
injustices  and  to  secure  a  more  Christian  social  order, 
but  also  because  there  is  not  in  the  Church  itself  a  spirit 
of  genuine  brotherhood  and  democratic  fellowship.  That 
there  is  some  basis  for  the  criticism  cannot  be  denied. 
The  proclamation  of  a  gospel  of  brotherhood  to  the 
world  is  evidently  effective  in  just  about  the  degree  to 
which  such  a  way  of  life  prevails  in  the  Church  that  pro- 
claims it.  It  is  also  clear  that  the  experience  of  fellow- 
ship in  the  army  showed  men  the  possibility  of  it,  gave 
them  a  "taste"  for  it,  and  increased  the  demand  that  there 
be  more  of  it  in  civilian  life. 

We  heartily  agree  with  our  fellow-Christians  in  Eng- 
land that  "the  Church  ought  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
world  by  the  type  of  common  life  into  which  her  mem- 
bers are  drawn,  a  life  of  simplicity  and  self-discipline,  of 
practical  fellowship  and  brotherhood,  in  which  the  joyous 
and  affectionate  atmosphere  of  a  Christian  family  is  ex- 
tended to  the  congregation  worshipping  at  a  common 
altar,  and  beyond  that,  to  the  whole  body  of  the  Church. 
This  must  be  her  challenge  to  the  present  social  order — 
no  mere  denunciation  of  wrong,  but  the  exhibition,  in  the 
communities  of  men  and  women  worshipping  in  her 
churches,  of  the  power  of  Christianity  to  establish  a  new 
earthly  relationship  reflecting  a  spiritual  unity  which 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  151 


transcends  all  social  distinction  of  class  or  wealth. 
Through  such  a  divine  esprit  de  corps  she  will  convince 
the  world  of  the  presence  of  Christ  in  His  Church  and 
will  rebuke  by  life  as  well  as  by  word  the  social  injustices 
unworthy  of  a  Christian  nation."^^ 

3.  The  experience  of  the  chaplains  and  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  in  practical  ministries  suggests  at  least  the  possi- 
bility of  a  wider  ministry  to  the  community.  The  great 
value  of  a  ministry  to  all  the  sick,  for  example,  was  abun- 
dantly demonstrated. 

Most  of  the  ministers  in  service  undoubtedly  gave  more 
attention  to  practical  ministry  to  the  felt  needs  of  men — 
physical,  social  and  mental,  as  well  as  directly  spiritual — 
than  they  had  done  in  civilian  life.  The  circumstances, 
of  course,  demanded  it,  since  the  ordinary  provisions  of 
home  and  school  and  recreation  were  not  at  hand.  In 
the  personal  contacts  resulting  from  this  practical  minis- 
try many  found  great  opportunities  for  reaching  the 
souls  of  men  most  eflPectively.  We  do  not  venture  to 
suggest  to  what  extent  such  practical  ministries  should 
be  continued  by  the  Churches  in  the  various  home  com- 
munities where  conditions  are  very  different  from  those 
which  obtained  in  the  army.  We  do,  however,  think  it 
needful  to  ask  whether  there  are  not  important  human 
needs  which  the  churches  in  some  communities  may  be 
expected  to  meet  and  which  would  afford  fine  contacts 
for  spiritual  work  with  men. 

A  particular  field  in  which  the  chaplains  demonstrated 
the  great  value  of  their  practical  ministry  in  the  army 
was  the  hospital.  Here  the  chaplains  devoted  themselves, 
not  to  the  sick  of  their  own  faith  alone,  but  to  all.  The 
Churches  may  well  consider  the  possibility  of  extending 
such  a  ministry  more  widely  in  civilian  communities. 

In  the  army  all  the  sick  of  the  community  were  to  be 
found  in  the  public  wards  of  central  hospitals.  That 


Archbishops'  Third  Committee  of  Inquiry. 


153    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


made  the  systematic  ministry  to  all  the  sick  a  much  sim- 
pler matter  than  in  civil  life.  In  many  cases  the  men 
were  out  of  reach  of  any  family  care  or  attention,  which 
made  the  ministry  of  the  chaplains  especially  imperative 
and  appreciated,  but  in  spite  of  these  differences  it  seems 
quite  possible  that  the  Churches  by  cooperative  effort 
could  bring  a  practical  and  spiritual  ministry  to  the  sick 
of  civilian  communities  much  more  widely  than  is  now 
attempted. 

VII.   CONCERNING  CHURCH  UNITY  . 

One  of  the  outstanding  lessons  of  the  war  is  the  possi- 
bility of,  and  the  widespread  desire  for,  a  greater  degree 
of  practical  unity  and  cooperation  among  the  Churches. 

An  overwhelming  majority  of  the  chaplains  with  whom 
this  Committee  has  come  into  touch  declare  that  one  of 
the  impressions  made  most  keenly  upon  their  minds 
is  the  need  for  unity  in  the  Churches.  The  conditions 
under  which  they  worked  made  practical  cooperation  on 
their  part  an  imperative  necessity.  They  are  convinced 
that  a  continuation  of  this  cooperative  relationship  is 
both  practicable  and  needed  in  a  larger  degree  than  has 
obtained  in  civilian  life.  They  have  no  ready-made 
scheme  for  bringing  this  about,  but  they  do  insist  that 
the  problem  must  be  tackled  with  more  earnestness  and 
energy  than  has  yet  been  given  to  it.  They  are  convinced 
that  in  the  war  we  found  ourselves  possessing  more 
practical  unity  than  we  had  supposed,  and  that  we  must 
not  let  this  vision  of  our  unity  grow  dim. 

1.  We  have  learned  in  the  army  how  indifferent  many 
laymen  within  the  Churches  and  many  earnest  men  just 
outside  are  to  our  denominational  differences. 

The  personality  and  approach  of  the  minister  is  a 
vastly  greater  factor  in  his  appeal  or  authority  than  the 
source  of  his  ordination,  as  far  as  most  men  within  or 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  153 


without  the  Church  are  concerned.  Most  laymen  are  not 
able  to  see  why  sacraments  as  administered  in  a  certain 
way  or  by  a  certain  order  of  ministers  are  more  valid 
than  the  same  sacraments  otherwise  administered.  They 
may  have  preferences  as  to  form,  and  a  certain  feeling  of 
family  pride  in  the  Church  they  belong  to.  But  the  ques- 
tion of  validity  is  not  intelligible  to  many.  Similarly  our 
credal  distinctions  are  not  vital  to  the  majority.  That 
a  majority  should  feel  this  way  does  not  of  course  prove 
that  the  majority  is  right,  but  it  does  prove  that  our 
divisions  and  exclusions  far  outrun  any  living  differences 
between  our  constituencies. 

2.  An  important  factor  in  promoting  fellozvship 
among  the  chaplains  in  the  army  was  their  frequent  con- 
ferences for  discussion  of  their  common  task.  Similar 
conferences  among  Christian  workers  from  the  various 
Churches  would  be  equally  desirable  in  normal  times  and 
conducive  to  a  spirit  of  unity. 

The  secret  of  the  fellowship  among  the  chaplains  dur- 
ing the  war  was  to  be  found  in  the  common  task  in  which 
they  were  engaged.  The  oneness  of  their  work  was 
more  clear  when  they  were  comrades  in  arms  in  a  single 
army  than  when  they  were  detached  from  one  another  in 
civilian  life,  each  pursuing  his  own  work  with  very  little 
knowledge  of  what  others  were  undertaking  to  do.  Not 
only  in  the  training  schools  for  chaplains  but  also  in 
many  of  the  large  camps,  were  there  frequent  confer- 
ences concerning  their  work  and  the  methods  by  which 
the  task,  too  large  for  all  of  them  together,  could  be  most 
efficiently  carried  out.  A  parallel  to  these  conferences 
was  found  among  the  Churches  at  home  in  the  General 
War-Time  Commission,  in  which  representatives  of  the 
war  commissions  of  more  than  a  score  of  bodies  came 
together  every  two  weeks  during  the  war  to  consider 
their  common  task  and  to  make  their  plans  in  consultation 
with  one  another. 


154    RELIGION  AMONG  AMERICAN  MEN 


We  believe  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  there  is  not  a 
larger  degree  of  cooperation  among  the  Churches  at  home 
is  because  Christians  of  the  various  denominational 
bodies  do  not  more  often  meet  together,  around  the  table, 
to  share  with  one  another  their  experiences,  to  take  coun- 
sel together  concerning  common  problems,  and  to  receive 
the  inspiration  of  united  undertakings.  Can  we  not  learn 
from  our  experience  in  the  war  to  lay  hold  of  the  benefits 
that  can  come  from  more  frequent  and  systematic  con- 
ference together 

3.  Can  the  Churches  show  cause  before  God  and  pub- 
lic opinion  why  the  cooperation  and  mutual  recognition 
which  characterized  the  ministry  in  the  army  is  not  prac- 
ticable and  desirable  out  of  the  army? 

In  the  army  we  have  in  the  main : 

a.  "Allowed  men  of  all  denominations  to  come  to  our 
communions,  taking  their  desire  to  communicate  as  a 
sufficient  reason  for  receiving  them." 

b.  United  freely  in  common  worship,  wherein  the 
ministers  and  people  of  many  denominations  joined  to- 
gether. 

c.  Cooperated  fully  in  practical  service,  in  religious 
ministries  to  the  sick,  and  in  the  generous  sharing  of  plans 
and  assignment  of  responsibilities. 

Shall  we  now  undertake  to  prove  to  the  men  of  our 
own  constituencies  that  the  ministrations  which  they  re- 
ceived in  faith  from  ministers  of  other  denominations 
were  not  only  irregular  but  invalid,  that  the  Christian 
comrades  with  whom  they  joined  in  worship  were  not 
complete  brothers  in  Christ  because  they  had  not  received 
valid  baptism  or  confirmation  or  were  not  joint  inheritors 
of  the  true  faith,  that  the  cooperation  of  the  chaplains 

'8  Cf.  the  resolution  on  "Christian  Unity"  adopted  by  a  group  of  British 
chaplains  at  a  conference  in  France,  March  1214,  1919:  "In  our  opinion, 
great  and  mutual  benefits  would  result  from  the  holding  of  joint  confer- 
ences, conventions  and  retreats,  by  members  of  our  several  churches  as  a 
regular  and  normal  part  of  the  life  of  those  churches." 


WHAT  THE  CHURCH  MAY  LEARN  155 

in  the  army  is  not  desirable  among  churches  at  home? 
Shall  we  not  rather  go  forward,  in  the  unity  of  the  Spirit 
of  Christ,  into  an  ever  increasing  cooperation  and  more 
effective  achievement  of  our  common  task? 


DATE  DUE 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U  S  A 

